Bernard Gregoire wrote:

>The best I have been able to figure is that film music recordings usually
>follow no particular structure save a consecutive scenic tracking of the
>action.

That's the standard method of film scoring (deriving, incidentally, from
Wagnerian opera), but there have been others.  Virgil Thomson, one of the
best film scorers of all, did something different, as did David Raksin's
Laura, Prokofiev, and Walton.

However, because most film music is tied to image and scene, with very few
opportunities for set pieces, they almost always have to be reworked for
concert performance.  Sometimes the composers themselves do it; most often,
it seems to be done by arrangers, the finest of which was, in my opinion,
the late Christopher Palmer, who worked on the Gerhardt-George Korngold
series of film-score recordings.  Wonderful concert scores include:

Prokofiev: Lt. Kije Suite, Alexander Nevsky Cantata, Ivan  the Terrible
(arr. by Stassov, I believe)
Walton: Richard III, Hamlet, Henry V (all arranged by Muir Matheson)
Rozsa: Ben Hur (arr. by Palmer), Quo Vadis (arr. by Palmer), Madame Bovary
(arr. by Palmer), Young Bess (arr. by Palmer), The Lost Weekend (arr.), The
Killers (arr.), Double Indemnity (arr.), Background to Violence Suite,
Jungle Book (arr. Palmer, although Rozsa did a less successful  arrangement
himself), Thief of Bagdad (arr. by Palmer)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 7 (Scott of the Antarctic)
Milhaud: L'Album de Madame Bovary (Madame Bovary), Le cheminee du Roi Rene
Herrmann: Welles Raises Kaine, Psycho: A Narrative for Orchestra, North by
Northwest, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (arr.), Citizen Kaine (arr.), Taxi Driver
(arr. by Palmer), The Three Worlds of Gulliver, Jason and the Argonauts, The
Kentuckian (arr. by Fred Steiner), many others
Korngold: Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto (Deception)
Waxman: Blackboard Jungle
Stravinsky: Babel (Genesis)
Schoenberg: Prelude to Genesis (Genesis)
Shostakovich: Hamlet (2 suites, one for a stage production, the other for a
film), King Lear, The Gadfly, and lots of others
Copland: The Red Pony, Music for the Movies, Our Town, Music for a Great
City (Something Wild)
Moross: The Big Country (arr.), The Proud Rebel (arr.)
Bernstein, L: On the Waterfront
Bernstein, E: Toccata for Toy Trains, The Miracle, To Kill a Mockingbird
Goldsmith: Lilies of the Field (arr.)
Amram: The Manchurian Candidate (arr.)
Kubik: The Desperate Hours (arr.)
Honegger: Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, many others
Thomson: The River, The Plow that Broke the Plains, Men and Power,
Louisiana Story, Acadian Songs and Dances (Louisiana Story - a second suite)
Williams: American Suite (The Reivers)

Steve Schwartz