As Bill Whitaker points out in his enthusiastic and informative notes, Alfred Newman’s contribution to the cinema has been largely overlooked during the current spate of film music revivals, most probably because many of his best scores were for films that are not widely remembered today. However, Marco Polo make some amends to plug the gap with this excellent disc devoted to three of Newman’s most powerful scores. Only one recalls his lengthy career at 20th Century-Fox, the short but punchy suite from All about Eve (1950), as the bulk of the disc is devoted to his grandiose score for RKO’s costly production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). The notes offer a fascinating insight into the score’s history and rumours that certain cues were not written by Newman at all, most controversially the famous “Hallelujah” chorus which Newman would later reuse for The Song of Bernadette (1943) and The Robe (1953), and which may actually have been penned by Ernst Toch. But, regardless of the score’s roots, Newman’s personality is stamped all over it, and, despite a few blustering moments, the rich, dramatic scoring and emotional incident is always compelling. Perhaps even more rewarding, however, is the rousing 20-minute suite from Beau Geste. Composed during the same busy year (1939), it blazes with a wonderfully robust sense of adventure. Throughout this spectacular recording, conductor and orchestra respond to the composer’s crisp phrasing and agile scoring with a flair that would surely have delighted the man himself.'