The Music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold

The very first LP I ever bought with my own money, way back in the mid 1970s, was called Captain Blood, and was a collection of classic film scores for Errol Flynn films. Captain Blood itself was represented by a short piece called Ship in the Night. Captain Blood and his pirates see a ship in the distance one evening.
"Where is she going?" one of them asks.
Errol Flynn gazes after the stern lights with melancholy longing. "England," he says. "Where we may never go...." (cue romantic Korngold score).
The record also had music from The Sea Hawk, one of my favourite pirate films of all time, including the bit where it turns briefly into an opera - the English galley slaves have taken over the Spanish ship, and they all start singing about being bound for the shores of Dover! If I were ever on Desert Island Discs, that would be one of my eight records, and the nearest thing to opera that I'd choose.
The Adventures of Don Juan is on there, by Max Steiner, and various other films like The Sun Also Rises - and to finish it all off, there's The Adventures of Robin Hood (my favourite Robin Hood film of all time), with what is supposed to
be the most complicated trumpet solo in any piece of film music.

Wonderful as all this was, and I still listen to the record regularly, it was only part of a set - the first Korngold record of the series got the other bits of Sea Hawk and Robin Hood, and I've been looking for it ever since.

Today, I was chatting to one of my colleagues at work when I happened to look down at the LPs she had leaning against her desk. One of them was The Sea Hawk. I looked closer. I beamed in a delighted way. There it was, with two galleons pounding each other with cannon fire on the front cover: The classic film scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, including the other bits of Captain Blood, Sea Hawk and Robin Hood, and with other films like King's Row and The Constant Nymph.
Even better, there were two other records with it. Elizabeth and Essex, more Korngold scores, has Errol Flynn and Bette Davis on the front cover, and includes music from The Prince and the Pauper, Deception and Anthony Adverse.
Captain from Castile is the classic film scores of Alfred Newman, and has a large portrait shot of Tyrone Power on the front cover, on a background of Spanish soldiers and (presumably) Incas or Aztecs. That one includes music from Wuthering Heights, The Song of Bernadette and The Robe as well as Captain from Castile.

I bought the lot, on the spot, and I'm looking forward to a quiet evening communing with the record player!