Marco Polo has already given us music which Salter wrote for the Frankenstein movies, but here for the first time we have the complete film score from the House of Frankenstein which was composed in 1944.
Salter was regarded as one of the symphonic composers who worked in Hollywood, having fled there from Germany in 1937.
But in agreeing to make this full recording we came across one major obstacle in that no score existed, Universal Films having trashed their old horror scores many years before. Painstakingly, from a three-line piano reduction which was unearthed elsewhere, John Morgan and William Stromberg, with the help of the original film sound track, slowly reconstructed the original scoring, and with Salter's blessing, only weeks before his death, the complete score is now recorded.
It is conducted by William Stromberg, and it is related that when the recording took place in December 1994 the Moscow Symphony Orchestra musicians who had not known of Salter, believed that this was a contemporary score, so modern was the musical approach.
We should also give due recognition to Paul Dessau who co-operated with Salter on the score, another emigre from Germany whose influences had included Arnold, Schoenberg and Otto Klemperer.
