Il figlio di Spartacus

Digitmovies presents the fourth volume of the series dedicated to the original soundtracks of the Italian Peplum genre. This CD project was made possible once again thanks to the help of our friends at C.A.M. The music composed by Piero Piccioni for “Il figlio di Spartacus” (aka “The slave” The son of Spartacus) is appearing for the first time on record, taken directly from the mono master tapes survived until today. The movie, a kind of “Made in Italy sequel” of Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus”, was directed in 1962 by Sergio Corbucci and starring the mythic Steve Reeves as Rando, son of Spartacus, Claudio Gora, Jacques Sernas, Gianna Maria Canale. Piero Piccioni (Turin, 1921 – Rome, 2004) is one of the most important names of the Italian Film Music who has scored more than 400 scores for Cinema and Television between 1952 (“Il mondo le condanna”) and 1998 (“Incontri proibiti”). In 1961 Sergio Corbucci and Piero Piccioni had already collaborated for the Peplum “Romolo e Remo” (“Duel of the titans”) starring Steve Reeves, Gordon Scott and Virna Lisi (available on CD C.A.M. 493491-2). For “Il figlio di Spartacus” Piero Piccioni wrote a heroic main theme with a classic flavour performed by French horns, strings and percussions, as introduced in “Titoli” (Tr. 1). Piero Piccioni alternates aggressive themes for brass used for the fight scenes that almost seem to be precursor of some string passages from John Williams’ “Star Wars” scores (Tr. 7, Tr. 8, Tr. 22), with other mysterious and middle orient flavoured ones like the tribal dances (Tr. 12, Tr. 15). He evidently provided large number of pieces emphasizing the mystical side of the plot (Rando, son of the legendary hero Spartacus) including a series of eerie, suspended, almost magical themes (Tr. 3, Tr. 4, Tr. 6, Tr. 9, Tr. 10, Tr. 11, Tr. 13, Tr. 14, Tr. 16, Tr. 17, Tr. 18). Our CD closes with three bonus tracks: alternate versions of “Combattimento” (Tr. 22) and “Il trionfo di Rando” (Tr. 23), introduced by the strings sans the brass and the stereophonic version of “Danza selvaggia” (Tr. 24).