"If John Huston’s 1956 big-screen version of Herman Melville’s masterpiece has always tended to divide opinion, there has never been any argument about the magnificent quality of the extensive musical score supplied by a little-known English composer named Philip Sainton (1891-1967). . . . The breathtakingly confident and richly evocative sea music in Moby Dick will come as no surprise to those acquainted with The Island. . . . The overriding impression left by Moby Dick is one of intense vitality and engaging personality: here is music of richly stocked imagination and uncommonly fertile resource. Not only does Sainton perceptively convey Captain Ahab’s tortured personality and the mounting obsession of his vengeful search for the giant white whale, but there’s an immensely subtle long-term scheme too. . . . In sum, Sainton’s Moby Dick is a genuine tour de force and its subsequent neglect unaccountable. My overall assessment chimes resoundingly with that of annotator Bill Whitaker, when he declares that it “deserves a spot alongside the best of Britain’s sea music, including Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony, Frank Bridge’s The Sea and Arnold Bax’s Fourth Symphony”. . . . [T]he Moscow SO under William T. Stromberg’s urgent direction . . . respond with great zest and commitment . . . . [I]t’s clear that the whole enterprise was a great labour of love, and all involved certainly deserve our hearty gratitude." -- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone
