Un minuto per pregare, un'istante per morire.

Digitmovies continues its long journey along the boundless prairies of the Italian Western with this CD release of the complete orchestral score by Carlo Rustichelli for the movie "Un minuto per pregare,un istante per morire" (aka "Escondido" - " A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die") directed by Franco Giraldi in 1967 and starring the American actors Alex Cord, Arthur Kennedy, Robert Ryan and the Italians Nicoletta Macchiavelli, Giampiero Albertini, Enzo Fiermonte,Mario Brega. The movie's plot is about Clay McCord (Cord), an outlaw gunslinger on whose life a reward of ten thousand dollars is set. The man frequently suffers from a kind of paralysis on his right arm so that he travels to father Santana believing that he can be cured by him. Clay finds the priest dead, but he succeeds in killing the murderer and then leaves for Escondido where Sheriff Krant's (Brega) henchmen besiege the village by stopping the supplies for the worn-out population. Clay manages to let in the supplies and can take refuge to the house of a woman called Laurinda (Macchiavelli). As the governor Lem Carter (Ryan) has proclaimed an amnesty for all those outlaws who will lay down their weapons, Clay wants to surrender, but Sheriff Krant and his men prevent him from surrendering and keep on hunting him with the hope to put their hands on the reward up to a dramatic ending.In those days RCA issued a 33 rpm vinyl album in the SP promotional series (SP 8023) with seven selections in mono (22:24) which were re-issued in stereo sound for the first time on CD (RCA 74321-63517-2) in 1998. For this CD with a long duration (73:14) we could use the complete mono master tapes of the original sessions which had been magnificently conducted by Bruno Nicolai and which gave us the chance to release every note recorded for the movie (50:50). As bonus tracks at the end of the CD we have also included the seven stereo selections. The mono master tapes were in good condition, but the sound was a little bit grim so that we did our best to restore it by adding a certain brilliance to it. The talent of Carlo Rustichelli can be found once again in this symphonic OST: here the author takes a step back from the renowned Italian Western sound, he gets nearer to the American orchestral sound and he bestows on his compositions a classic and grandiose tone, in accordance with the wish of director Giraldi, a big aficionado of classical music. M°Rustichelli, with the support of the great conductor Bruno Nicolai, has created a recurrent nostalgic main theme for guitar and orchestra (Tr.4,Tr.6,Tr.22) which is alternated with extremely dramatic themes (Tr.13,Tr.16,Tr.19,Tr.20,Tr.21) and experimental music themes (Tr.7,Tr.9.), but also some saloon music (Tr.8,Tr.11,Tr.15) is featured. This CD, enriched on the front sleeve with the very beautiful American poster artwork, wants to pay a sincere homage to the wonderful musical art of Carlo Rustichelli, one of the greatest composers for the screen, who was able to create one of his best OST of the Italian Silver Age for this Franco Giraldi movie.