Sydney Pollack’s classic romantic weepie Out of Africa was one of 1985’s most popular films, audiences really falling for Meryl Streep and Robert Redford as Karen Blixen and Denys Hatton, whose complicated early 20th century relationship in Kenya formed the basis of Blixen’s popular memoir. The film won seven Oscars – including Best Picture and Best Director – and the fourth of the great John Barry’s five Academy Awards. Pollack’s previous six films had been scored by Dave Grusin (and several of his later ones were), but it is hard to imagine anyone other than Barry scoring this film – it is one of the great film scores.

Whole books could be written about the magnificent main theme – indeed I’m not sure it would be possible to overstate its magnificence. I don’t know how many hundreds of times I’ve heard it over the years – famously, Barry had to persuade Pollack that the film didn’t need to be filled with indigenous African music because while it is set in Africa, it is not about Africa – it’s about two westerners and their relationship. But here in this theme, the sense of landscape is as potent as the sense of romance – great harmonic intervals perfectly evoking wide open spaces, the exquisitely warm strings and horn chords providing the most ravishing sense of romance.

There are many great big, grand themes for films, of course – not so much these days, but countless in decades past. Is there a bigger, grander one than this? I’m not sure – I think it’s my favourite piece of music by John Barry (and he is one of the all-time-great film composers, so that is saying something). It’s used sparingly in the film – for the two sets of titles at either end, and most prominently in between in “Flying Over Africa”, accompanying Streep and Redford in their little plane flying over the magnificent landscapes and wildlife, for that moment accompanied not just by the sweeping orchestra but also an ethereal choir. Of all the recordings of the themes I’ve heard over the years, I think (and some will think this heretical) that the extended, slightly slower version on Barry’s Moviola album is my favourite – somehow even grander. From the master of lyrical, sweeping, romantic themes – they don’t get more lyrical, sweeping or romantic than this one. I could bathe in its luxurious warmth forever.

While it’s hardly novel to say that the theme from Out of Africa is great, I’m not sure the rest of the score is often given the credit it deserves. It’s a sparsely-scored movie (a shade over 40 minutes of music in a film that’s not far off three hours) but Barry finds time for three or four other truly exquisite melodies which are heard at least once (some of them several times) during that time. The flute theme introduced in “Alone on the Farm” and later reprised quite magnificently in “I’m Better at Hello” – the string theme in “The Farm” – the piano of “Have You Got a Story for Me?” – the soaring melody of “Karen’s Journey Starts” – they’re all so good.

The original 1985 album contained most of the score’s highlights but it had a great flaw – the sound quality was terrible (bizarrely, given the recording technology then available). Indeed I haven’t listened to it for many years now because of the extremely well-done re-recording with Joel McNeely conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra which was released in 1997. But now, at last, almost forty years after it was recorded, Intrada has put out this deluxe release which presents not just the complete score (while there is nothing truly revelatory in the additional material, it adds further depth and colour – we do get one entirely-unreleased theme, in “Meeting on the Porch”, which is just as good as all the others) but does so in crystal-clear sound, revealing the genuinely remarkable score in far greater detail than we have ever heard before. Needless to say, there’s also a host of source music, alternative takes and demos (the solo oboe versions of two of the themes are particularly fascinating) and a remastered version of the original album. Barry was one of a kind and this is one of his towering achievements. They don’t write them like this any more.

I should also note that this was one of the final album productions by the Intrada label’s legendary Douglass Fake and what a legacy he left behind – now including this, the finest soundtrack release of 2024.