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Film Music Editor: Ian Lace |
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November 1999 Film Music CD
Reviews |
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Return to the November Index with thumbnails [ Part 1 ] [ Part 2 ] [ Part 3 ] [ Part 4 ]
OST Composed and conducted by the composer.
Following a strong debut like "Wide Awake," "The Castle" is a trifle disappointing. A comparison between very diversified scores is unfair, that is true, but the over-simplicity, the predictability, of Choi's first score remains with him regardless.
However, a more serious, additional problem emanates here that cheapens the album. Despite individual tracks being conventional, the score as a whole goes to the opposite. The use of pre-existing music as a guide is obvious. It suffers from filmmusical schizophrenia! The liner notes by Film Score Monthly scribe Mark Leneker state that Edmund Choi had to reinvent the spotting cues, and Choi confirms that he tried to make the music his own. Unluckily, only the last seven or so tracks (not counting the 'synthesizer demo' curiosities tacked onto the end) do a confident job demonstrating the skill behind the task. I had a troublesome time getting 'into' the soundtrack because of this.
Okay, it does have some phenomenal qualities. The track 'Losing,' with its earnest piano solo and thoughtful chords, is where the magic begins, where the album ventures above the typical program of cinema music. Another reward is the main theme -- beautiful, with what sounds to be Edmund Choi's trademark of a broad melody line (which receives several consummate variations). The composer also clearly enjoys composing for motion pictures, and that feeling is something one should always hear in a film score.
Reviewer
Jeffrey Wheeler
Ian Lace adds:-
This is another of those soundtracks that sounds as if it is a compilation of many others - there is a sameness here too much of a feeling of we have heard it all before. [Too many times this year have I been disappointed with new scores that seemed to have been ‘written by numbers.’] To be fair to Mr Choi, The Castle score is nicely crafted and splendidly played. I would echo Jeffrey Wheeler’s sentiments in his review of Wide Awake this month - Mr Choi shows definite promise and, if he will excuse my patronising tone, he is still young, still learning his craft; but when he finds his mature individual voice, we might hear some exceptional work.
In his notes, Mark Leneker suggests this score is reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’s music. I have to confess I could hear no such similarity. I think Mr Leneker might have been thinking of the homely, cosy county-dance type music which opens the album but personally, I would associate this with the other side of the Atlantic. The score is quite eclectic and includes diverse Pop, rock and country styles as well as more weighty authoritarian material for ‘High Court.’ With its snare drummings it suggests scant justice! One of the highlights is ‘Losing’ and ‘Packing Up.’ Starting with attractive solo piano and guitar meanderings the textures thicken to include strings and the music broadens out into a nice romantic melody.
Lets hope that this and Wide Awake are stepping stones to bigger things
Reviewer
Ian Lace
First Kid belongs to the endless string of Kids/Comedy movies created by Walt Disney studios and destined to sink into oblivion. This one is about the strengthening of the relationship between the First Kid (son of the President of the USA) and his bodyguard, through a variety of comic, and not only so, situations. Sounds familiar?
For this particular movie Disney hired Richard Gibbs, a composer of about 30 scores for movies and TV shows, relatively unknown to a majority of film score enthusiasts.
The score fires off with a light-hearted and enjoyable march in the Main Title, played by initially by a flute over snare drums, until the full orchestra takes over for a full thematic development. A sparse use of a whistle is made to emphasise the comic nature of the movie. Actually this light/comic mood characterises the music almost throughout the score. The Snake Chat fires off with a soft theme played by a flute, with an occasional appearance of gentle bells, and a small underlying ensemble of strings.
Sammy the Snake and The First Fight are the first true action tracks in the CD and they are really good, although too short! Sammy the Snake is actually a cartoonish rendition main title march, while The First Fight uses a more traditional action music approach with an addition of synths, and layers of beat and brass.
Friendship and Puppy love provide a sentimental quality to the score, efficiently using flute, piano, bells and synths accompanied by the orchestra, to build a romantic mood, never becoming too emotional though, always maintaining the light nature of the score. Explosive donuts just repeats the short action cue heard in First Fight.
From track 9 onwards, the score receives a boost. In the Mall/Woods Goes Berserk is the longest cue on the disk and contains several enjoyable moments, especially the second half. Taking the Bullet is the highlight cue of the score, a great action track that, by utilizing the well-known Goldsmithian action style and orchestration, elaborately builds a sense of suspense, anticipation. The CD concludes to the march introduced in the Main Title.
In overall, this score left me with mixed feelings. Essentially, it is a comic militaristic score. In parts, it becomes exciting but in others it touches dangerously the category of filler music. The soft themes are good but unoriginal as well as the action themes that seem greatly influenced by the music of Jerry Goldsmith (which is in a way a blessing in disguise). The good use of the orchestra, spiced up with synths, and the adequate orchestration manage for the most of the part to compensate for the poor originality.
Considering the hand at task though, Gibbs seems to have performed quite well.
The CD quality is good, but nothing exceptional. The booklet contains text from
the director David Evans and Richard Gibbs, explaining how anxious and eager
they were to make that movie. Oh, well... Whether you will enjoy this score depends on your mood at that moment.
Reviewer
Kostas Anagnostou
Hummie Mann has for many years been one of Hollywood’s top orchestrators. His TV credits include Fame, The Simpsons, and Moonlighting and his films: The Addams Family; A Few Good Men, The Prince of Tides and City Slickers.
As a composer, he has scored: Year of the Comet, Benefit of the Doubt, Box Office Bunny (the first Bugs Bunny cartoon to be released to theatres in 26 years), and for the Rebel Highway and Picture Windows series. He also scored Mel Brooks’ film, Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
It was natural therefore, that Mel Brooks should go to Mann for the score of Dracula, Dead and Loving It (1996). Wisely, Mann created a "serious" gothic score against the inanities of the satirical plot. He confessed that he saw many Dracula films and researched the musical approaches of other composers. "I listened to all the other Dracula scores: John Williams’, the Hammer score, Wojciech Kilar’s one for Coppola… I tried to come up with my own twist…" Mann’s large gothic-sounding score is written for a substantial orchestra of 87 musicians and a choir of 16 singers, multi-tracked. "I played toward the power of Dracula, his ability to control people through hypnosis or move objects with a wave of his hand – to reinforce the idea that he was a force to be reckoned with."
His main theme is full of grandeur and is darkly sinister yet vaguely heroic. This theme has a little five-figure tailpiece that is at the same time not only slightly comic and satirical but also suggestive of fluttering bats. This is a neat and clever touch. Mann’s music captures the sinister elements of the story but it also suggests the essential loneliness of Dracula and his yearning for love. The score is often very sensual and voluptuous. For the ball scene Mann creates comically manic arrangements of Villoldo’s famous El Choclo tango and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5 and contributes a very convincing Bohemian-like folk dance of his own. Earlier the score had also included some Bohemian gypsy music for the villagers.
An entertaining score
Reviewer
Ian Lace
I must say that I am perplexed to see a Newman needing a promotional album especially if it’s the David Newman, the eldest son of the great Alfred Newman. This Newman began with an early passion for conducting. (He admired Toscanini particularly.) He was inspired into following in his father’s footsteps to compose for films. His credits include: The War of the Roses, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, The Flintstones, The Nutty Professor and Matilda.
"Brokedown Place" refers to a hideous Thai prison where two teenagers (Clair Danes and Kate Beckinsale) are incarcerated after the authorities have caught them with drugs in their possession trying to leave the country for Hong Kong. (They were framed and used as unwitting couriers by a sly boyfriend.) The dank and horrible atmosphere of Brokedown Place is only too vividy evoked by David Newman; you can hear/feel the screechings and the crawlings of innumerable, unmentionable little horrors.
The score is inventively scored using a combination of western and ethnic instrumentation with exotic pipes and percussion prominent and piano. Newman wrings sympathetically for the girls’ plight with music that shows their fright, frailty, bewilderment and desperation. It is an often thrilling but harrowing score the few moments of high spirits such as the girls’ elation as they arrive in Thailand are welcome relief.
A good solid score
Reviewer
Ian Lace
Last month for Film Music on the Web I reviewed a new recording of the pilot movie score for Battlestar Galactica, with the composer himself, Stu Phillips conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and released on Varese Sarabande. Now here is a beautifully presented 4 CD anthology offering well over 4 hours of music from the soundtrack recordings of the pilot, the series which followed and the sequel series, Galactica 1980. It is a promotional set, the first release on composer Stu Phillips own label, and given that Battlestar Galactica was originally produced to capitalise on the success of Star Wars, this release appears post The Phantom Menace as part of a wave of renewed interest in the Galactica saga. Indeed, star Richard Hatch has long been an advocate of a revival of the series, and contributes a note promoting the possibilities of further adventures of Battlestar Galactica.
Frankly, this release astonishes me, in so far as I find it very difficult to believe there are people who would want four CDs worth of music from a mediocre 20-year-old TV show. I would have thought that the new recording would be more than satisfactory, given the strong performances and spectacular sound of that disc. However, here we have more music from the pilot score. The new Varese Sarabande release is essentially a remake the original soundtrack album issued in the late 70's, and contains 17 tracks spread over 48:33 minutes. Here Disc One is entitled "Saga of a Star World" and features 60:09 minutes from the pilot, divided into 29 tracks. Given that over five minutes consists of two source cues of rather hamfisted 70's jazz rock, there is really only about another 6 minutes of score. Even so, given the rather restricted mono sound - surely the master-tapes would have been in stereo - and even some rather unpleasant distortion in places, it seems to go on forever. The new recording showcases this music at its best, but on the originals, with sound one might easily mistake as coming from the mid-50's, it becomes more a matter of imagining how it could be, while all to often simply playing spot the influence. One moment it is Bernard Herrmann and Jason and the Argonauts, the next Miklos Rozsa and Lust for Life. Elsewhere there are reminders of Jerry Goldsmith's abrasive 70's action writing and Leonard Rosenman's atmospherics. Reflective, bleak moments such as 'Adama's Theme' come off best, a brooding and stark tonal world with shadows of William Alwyn's concert works.
Disc Two contains 62:29 minutes of music, consisting of the 'Main' and 'End Titles' from the TV show proper, plus suites from the two part stories "War of the Gods" and "Gun on Ice Planet Zero". Essentially this is more of the same, but with extra tape hiss. There are some dramatically inventive moments, such as 'The Lightship Appears', and the choral glitter of 'The Light Beings', but too much is simply yet more polished action and suspense writing with little in the way of memorable themes to sustain interest. It is accomplished television music, but away from the screen holds little to command attention.
Disc Three offers 66:52 minutes from the spin-off series, Galactica 1980. We are given the Main Title, suites from the two-part stories "The Living Legend" and "Lost Planet of the Gods", plus some sound effects and source cues from "War of the Gods", and source cues from "The Magnificent Warriors". The sound is rather better than on the second disc, but the mixture is as before, sombre string passages, suspense, action and adventure, with further variations if not on a theme, then on a very distinct style. The source cues suffer the fate of all attempts to write futuristic music, which is to say they sound very dated and of their period. This is the future as envisioned with state-of-the-art electronics circa 1980. That said, 'Starbuck's Luck' is quite appealing, but is the only one of these cues which is.
Disc Four has 66:45 minutes, again from Galactica 1980. An 'Alternative Main Title/Prologue' is rather more crisp and punchy than previous takes on the theme, and leads to suites from "The Lost Warrior", "The Young Lords", "The Magnificent Warriors", "The Long Patrol" and "The Hand of God". An extraordinarily dark love theme for Apollo and Bella is a highlight of sorts, while 'The Good the Bad and the Cylon' contains an element of Morricone homage within the soundworld established for the series. From then on the disc very much follows the pattern of the first three, with yet more brooding suspense, percussive action and stark, melancholy strings.
Long before the end this 4CD set becomes extremely wearisome, such that getting through it once is something of an endurance test. With functional sound and essentially generic, functional music for well over 4 hours, this really can only be of interest to real die hard fans of Battlestar Galactica. It is very nicely packaged, but how many people love both TV music and the show enough to want to seek this set out is another question entirely. All but the most fanatical are advised to consider the Varese Sarabande album instead.
Complete listing: [Return to head of review]
Disc One: [60:09] "Saga of a Star World" Disc Two: [62:29] 'Main Title', Suites from Battlestar Galactica TV series stories "War of the Gods" and "Gun on Ice Planet Zero", 'End Title'. Disc Three: [66:52] 'Main Title', suites from Galactica 1980 TV series "The Living Legend" and "Lost Planet of the Gods" plus sound effects, source cues, 'End Title'. [66:45]. Disc Four: [66:45] "Alternate Main Title/Prologue" Suites from Galactica 1980 TV series episodes "The Lost Warrior", "The Young Lords", "The Magnificent Warriors", "The Long Patrol", "The Hand of God". Total Time: [256:15]
Reviewer
Gary S. Dalkin
With nary a Dies Irae quote in sight, Pike is not to be envied in scoring another of Stephen King's mammoth TV adaptations. Especially since this already has the Kubrick stamp of authoritative interpretation, and a fine musical legacy to boot.
Far more faithful to the book, and with a lot more airtime to develop musical ideas, the mini-series was often surprisingly successful at conjuring the chills for an empty room ("Room 217") or moving hedge sculpture ("Topiary Tango"). What the music really did was paint the walls red with an eerie atmosphere of unease - even when the family unit seem hunky-dory - with children's chorus, piano, gongs and electronic rumblings. Then when Jack turns fruitloop with an axe, the shrieks and wails are often an unexpected shock.
Sadly, all this relates to the viewing experience. It's an atmospheric score that suits the claustrophobic surroundings of the Overlook Hotel, but can't help but be little more than background fright music in your own home. The disc therefore intrigues on an initial listen, but without the creeping camerawork to validate it, you may soon tire.
Reviewer
Paul Tonks
For all the feel-good intentions of this superhero hybrid project (Robocop / Iron Man etc.), it fared poorly. Something that unfairly makes this disc available only as a promo. Something with as much energy and good humour as this deserves to have greater exposure.
The gist of the format is that a metallurgist's experimental device is perverted by higher powers for criminal use. So to clean the streets of LA, John Irons becomes Steel - a metal-clad warrior for good. Got that ? Since Irons is black actor Shaquille O'Neal, director Kenneth Johnson went to Quincy Jones for recommendations to put urban street rhythms into the do-gooder's strides. Linked with Warren, the result is something like Superman meets Shaft. "Main Title" has a vaguely cheesy hero theme backed by both contemporary and seemingly seventies rhythms and licks. A bass guitar slides on through many of the cues but a sensible balance is kept between the brassy machismo and street-wise beats. "Gang Fight / Magnetic Personality" is a terrific showcase for the theme and dramatic action writing.
The only thing that lets the disc down is the gospel influenced "Stand Up (Steel Yourself)" song it ends with. It's entirely at odds with everything that's gone before.
Reviewer
Paul Tonks
Note: a track numbering error credits 23 when there are 24.
TV Scores and Curio Corner
Seven Days is an American TV science fiction drama series based on the familiar premise of someone travelling into the past in order to prevent something terrible which has already happened, happening. It is a stock SF idea offering endless possibilities, and here is given a similar limitation to the BBC's failed Crime Traveller: the heroes can only travel back in time the titular Seven Days. Each week the would-be new Mulder and Scully, CIA operative Parker and Russian scientist Olga Vukavitch, played by Jonathan LaPaglia and Justina Vail, must rewind the clock on some catastrophe, using time travel technology recovered from an alien spacecraft secretly recovered decades earlier by the American government. Whether this melting pot of recycled ideas is actually of any interested I can not say, nor have I any idea how successfully the music contained on this CD might work with the programme. What I can say is that it has no life away from the drama.
Scott Gilman, the booklet informs us, has worked as a touring and session musician playing saxophone, guitar and keyboards with The Tommy Dorsey Big Band, Terence Trent D'Arby, Chaka Khan, Howard Jones, Foreigner and other acts. He has his own band, and has scored episodes of Melrose Place, Beverley Hills 90210, Brimstone, Promised Land as well as several unnamed TV movies. He appears to be the regular series composer for Seven Days, and this album contains his opening and closing title music, together with suites from three episodes, Vows, Come Again and EBE's. Apart from the voiceovers on the 'Main Title' which explain the premise of the show, this is essentially one man and his soundcard, with the emphasis on relentless mechanical percussion as perfected by Brad Fidel for Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
The music here is clinically perfect, metronomic, and almost entirely lacking in human warmth. Tracks such as 'Back Step' feature sequenced military snare, before exploding into pounding machine fury and frozen samples of female voices. Elsewhere resonant synth patches growl, metallic sounds swoosh, atonal piano riffs cycle in upon themselves, and a wide variety of electronic percussion bangs, thuds and crashes with remorseless efficiency. Those who like to listen to recordings of pile drivers at very high volume on their car stereos will probably like the noisy bits, but might be put off by the occasional quite atmospheric interlude.
As functional suspense and action music this may well serve its intended purpose on screen, but with no real themes and no development, this is as much organised sound as anything approaching real music. So much so that the title is an appropriate summation of how long these 66 minutes seem to last. If this is the new sound of action adventure then perhaps a journey into the past to prevent the invention of the sequencer might be catastrophe worthy of our heroes. As such it really is a shame their time machine can't go back far enough.
Reviewer
Gary S. Dalkin
Save around 22% with
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This most generous anthology pushes CD right to the limits of the format's running time, offering at over 79 minutes, more music than many a double LP. There are 26 TV themes, with the 27th track graduating to the silver screen with the theme from a new version of An Ideal Husband. Unfortunately, not the acclaimed Oliver Parker production staring Rupert Everett and Julianne Moore and Jeremy Northam, with music by Charlie Mole, but a rival 1998 production led by James Wilby, Sadie Frost and Jonathan Firth, which after receiving some poor advance press, appears to have been shelved. The theme is attractive, but not especially distinctive.
The booklet features some amusing notes by Nigel Hess, sending-up a typical party conversation in which he fails to explain to a disbelieving guest that he really does write music for television: "Dramas on TV don't have any music, except maybe those short catchy tunes at the beginning and end - and nobody actually writes those… they get them off records." A situation I'm sure will be familiar to anyone reading this who has ever tried to explain their musical tastes to a stranger. Then, before detailing each track, the booklet explains how the music here - not the originals, but expanded new versions recorded by pick-up London Film Orchestra and the vocal group Chameleon, with which Hess has a long standing involvement - is culled from 15 years of work for television. We also learn that Nigel Hess has composed 20 scores for the Royal Shakespeare Company, won awards for music on Broadway, and had his work "The Way of Light" performed with actors, choir and orchestra in St. Paul's Cathedral in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen and HRH the Prince of Wales. So why, I was wondering, apart from having failed to see all but one of the 26 programmes, had I not heard of Nigel Hess? The answer is I am afraid, that on the evidence here at least, that his music has little appeal to film music fans.
Now inevitably, the music from 27 different productions, from comedies, to period dramas, detective shows and documentaries is going to vary considerably in style, containing everything from atmospheric pieces - Every Woman Knows a Secret, with beautiful wordless vocals by Mary Carewe - to pastiche 1920's dance music for Just William - but if there is a unifying element it is a rather MOR sensibility. Further, placing so many deliberately and instantly catchy themes all together can make for somewhat wearying listening - longer suites from a lesser number of programmes might have made for a more cohesive, but doubtless less commercial release. Nevertheless, I think this album will find its real home with enthusiasts for British Light Music, with which Chandos, (and other labels such as Marco Polo) have done so much in recent years. That is, if they can stomach tracks like Summer Lease, which is the sort of embarrassing bombast that results when progressive rock musicians from the 70's are allowed access to choir and orchestra. Indeed, an air of sentimental bombast is unfortunately rarely more than the next track away, with cliched up-lifting drums all to often employed to underpin the next anthemic tune, and to which the lyrical song from Chimera, sung by Olive Simpson offers too rare compensation.
Perhaps delicacy and subtlety are not the order of the day with TV themes, but too much here is cloying and overly sweet, possibly explaining why, despite Nigel Hess' undoubted talent and numerous awards he remains working in television (apart from the one, reputedly poor, film) rather than crossing over to join Patrick Doyle, Rachel Portman and Debbie Wiseman at the movies.
For the record, the complete track list is: Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, Badger, The One Game, Wycliffe, A Woman of Substance, Summer's Lease, Dangerfield, Just William, Every Woman Knows A Secret, Perfect Scoundrels, Anna of the Five Towns, Campion, Maigret, Vidal in Venice, Classic Adventure, All Passion Spent, Chimera, Testament, Vanity Fair, An Affair in Mind, The London Embassy, Atlantis, A Hundred Acres, Growing Pains, Us Girls, Titmuss Regained, An Ideal Husband.
Reviewer
Gary S. Dalkin
Bennett is best known as an orchestrator for shows and perhaps best of all for his Symphonic Portrait of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. His success with shows secured his commercial future. However he was also busy in the field of ‘serious’ composition.
Lincoln inspired many American works. The most exposed remains Copland’s Lincoln Portrait for orator ad chorus but the roster of Lincolniana is long and distinguished and the present symphony forms part of the orchestral list:-
A Lincoln Legend MORTON GOULD
Lincoln - Requiem Aeternam HERBERT ELWELL
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address works by JOHN BECKER and FERDY GROFÉ
Lincoln The Great Commoner CHARLES IVES
Symphony No. 10 Lincoln ROY HARRIS
Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight - works by EARL GEORGE, ROY HARRIS, ELIE SIEGMEISTER
Abraham Lincoln Song WALTER DAMROSCH
Lincoln Address VINCENT PERSICHETTI
Lincoln (unfinished) JOHN KNOWLES PAINE
(I would like to hear of other works on the theme of Lincoln)Bennett wrote four numbered symphonies:-
No. 1 written in Europe (1926)
No. 2 Lincoln - A Likeness in Symphony Form (1929) premiered by Stokowski
No. 3 (1941) inspired by Baseball - The Dodgers
No. 4 (1963)
There is also an un-numbered Stephen Foster Symphony (1954) for chorus and orchestra.The symphony on this disc was written for the 1929 RCA Victor competition judged by Stokowski, Olga Samaroff, Koussevitsky, Frederick Stock and Rudolph Ganz. The munificent prize ($25,000) was split equally five ways: between Copland’s Dance Symphony, Bloch’s Helvetia, Louis Gruenberg’s Symphony and the two works on this disc. Bennett had entered one serious work and the other a much lighter work. Both won alongside the Bloch, Copland and Gruenberg.
The Symphony is a work of serious and poetic spirit with much of the pugnacious Northern poetry of Hanson’s first two symphonies. Indeed Hanson seems to have been something of an influence and certainly he supported Bennett's works in concert performances throughout his life. This symphony is well worthy of that devotion. The hoarsely throaty horns captured in forward splendour in this recording are one of the coronet and laurels of this most rewarding recording. The initial moderato ruffles musingly lyrical waters with fragments of the belligerent Johnny Comes Marching Home. Apart from Hansonian coups there are also some typical Roy Harris eruptions from the brass. The second movement has a restive oboe song and some silky string playing as well as a jaunty cavalry patrol at 2.00. The Allegro Animato (III) has a flouncey dynamically glancing texture - a virtuosic helter-skelter of slides, runs and wilderness hunting calls. The finale is characterised by those grand stabbing and abrasive horns in full flight and hunting call clamour. This is a most rewarding work well attuned to those who love their Hanson, Roy Harris and Malcolm Arnold (anticipating his waspish exuberance and tense lyricism by at least a decade) but with a twist and skew all its own.
The Sights and Sound suite - entitled an ‘orchestral entertainment’ is the lighter of the two pieces. It is not however light in the Ferdy Grofé sense. It is more a dashing concerto for orchestra - a work alive with the chaotic collage spirit of a child’s colouring book. The work bursts with impressions: poetic, popular, banal and catchy. It seems a natural counterpart to the John Alden Carpenter works like Krazy Kat, Skyscraper and Adventures in a Perambulator. A slightly jazzy atmosphere crosses its pages but not suffocatingly so. The voices of people like Stravinsky (Rite of Spring), Constant Lambert (Piano Concerto), gamelan and Bartók are not far off and if some of these voices seem advanced for the time the coating given to these influences is candy-coated without being saccharin. Nothing is tough to take on. As a series of contemporary sketches it is more successful than George Lloyd’s similarly themed 1960s collage Charade. Another voice in there is that of Vaughan Williams and he also glances out through the pages of the symphony. The fruity-chirpy of the sax at track 9 0.35 in the Fox-Trot is a winner. This piece is much better than the notes and the movement titles (Union Station, Highbrows, Lowbrows, Electric Signs, Night Club, Skyscraper, Speed) hint. This is no Grofe or Coates style (and I like both composers by the way) novelty box of tricks.
Great notes by Bennett biographer George J Ferencz.
A valuable collection with plenty to enjoy in fact, all in all, quite a revelatory disc - a jewel in the Naxos crown. A CD that makes me want to hear more Bennett. How about the other symphonies?
Reviewer
Rob Barnett
This is a combination of modernist classical music with dubious jazz influences, not my favourite cocktail but intriguing nonetheless. Marsalis places huge demands on the players in his seven movement String Quartet that pools influences from Schoenberg, Shostakovitch but sounds curiously like Goodman gone mad! There are seven movements in all, each contain some sort of descriptive title but the occasional downright banality of the music definitely takes us nowhere in particular. I cannot but complement the Orion String Quartet for its passionate commitment to such weirdly unstimulating notes.
Not to say that Marsalis' experiments don't have some wisdom, but to this listener at least were distinctly cold mostly! The 'Fiddler's Tale' is slightly better although the echoes of the famous film music bearing the same name are never far away. 'Anatevkha' and all those famous tunes are re-worked in jazz like fashion, not always to the improvement of the music (or so I thought). There are some virtuoso contributions from Marsalis himself, and I'm not doubting his sensational technique in ay way, indeed it is consistently nothing short of amazing all the time.
'Swinging into the 21st' continues to provoke and create wide gaffes of opinions and although I didn't exactly warm to fiddlers or balls, the music is something new and original, that's saying something.
Reviewer
Gerald Fenech
Performance:
Sound:
Two further ballets from the Marsalis stable, and is the works reviewed before, nothing is fundamentally different from what we've come to expect from this source lately. These include some freer expositions of the jazz themes that are so popular with Marsalis and there is certainly much to enjoy for that type of music enthusiast. 'Sweet Release' contains much gimmickry and hulaballoo, mostly due to the definite Creole origins of the piece, a classic example of Negro musicianship, that is, purely inimitable. I'm still astounded by the virtuosity of the whole group with some wonderful playing from Marsalis himself.
'Ghost Story' is more sinister, more daredevil, here we have a smaller ensemble with piano, saxophone, Bass and drums accompanying the composer. This is pure jazz 'jamming' with the sensual sinister notes of the saxophone mingling with the skeletal and rasping sounds of the snare drums and piano, a highly obnoxious cocktail. I don't think that there is anything classical in all this but the crossover from rigid style to the free unhurried unbuttoned jazz is certainly refreshing. I'm sure that many will snap up this release just to listen to Marsalis' resounding virtuosity and his partners are also big names. Ultimately a matter of taste then but worth a listen.
Reviewer
Gerald Fenech
Book Review:
Halliwells Film & Video Guide 2000
Edited by John Walker
Harper Collins Entertainment. 948 pages £19:99; $22:50 Purchase from Amazon
For an editor like myself, life would be hard without this treasure of a reference book.
I am always relieved when a new version of Halliwell's Film and Video Guide arrives because the one that it supersedes is invariably tattered and falling apart from constant use. I guess I must refer to it, at least, to the equivalent of once per day.
It is amazing to think that this is the 15th edition of the Guide - and how it has grown! The bulk of the present edition makes it a large, hefty tone (although not overweight and it has a strong paperback cover) but I guess some future edition might have to be split into two volumes.
Clearly, a great deal of thought has gone into the format of this edition to make it as user-friendly as possible. The entries carry very helpful annotations in the form of small graphic icons that indicate:
Film suitable for family viewing
VHS video-cassette for the British PAL system
VHS video-cassette for the British OPAL system in wide screen-format
Video-cassette in a computer-coloured version
American NTSC video-cassette (not compatible with the British PAL system)
Laser Disc in either American NTSC format or British PAL format
Video CD
Soundtrack released on compact disc
Digital Video Disc
Cast in approximate order of importance
Points of interest
Notable songs
Academy Award
Academy Award Nomination
BAFTA
Moreover, and intelligently, all these symbols are shown in the context of a typical page, printed on the inside cover of the volume for quick, easy, fail-safe reference.
Lists of four-star and three-star films by title and year, and a list of all the Academy Award winners for best picture and director, best actor and actress, best supporting actor and actress, and best original and adapted screenplays. These lists cover the period 1903 (three-star films) and 1915 (four-star films) to 1998. It is salutary to note that there are very few four-star film entries for the years 1993 to 1998 and not one for 1998. The number of three-star films through this period was more impressive. From the 1998 three-star list I noted: Elizabeth, Life is Beautiful, Saving Private Ryan, Shakespeare in Love, A Simple Plan, The Thin Red Line, and The Truman Show. All these films had scores that were generally well received by we critics. Looking at the entries for these films in the body of the book, I noticed that Halliwell does not always accord with our views for not every composer's name is italicised (indicating "a particularly high standard"). Hirschfelder (Elizabeth); John Williams (Saving Private Ryan); Hans Zimmer (The Thin Red Line); and Burkhard Dallwitz (The Truman Show) - all do not earn the italicised accolade.
The 1000s of entries of established films indicate whether there is a recording available of the score - a very useful feature. For instance, the other day, a site visitor asked me whether there is a recording of Frederick Hollander's delightful music for the 1954 version of Sabrina. Halliwell confirmed that there was not (although the Main Title waltz is included in Casablanca - Classic Film Scores for the films of Humphrey Bogart - RCA GD80422) [HINT TO FILM MUSIC CD PRODUCERS: Isn't it about time the film music and this score in particular of Frederick Hollander was committed to disc??]
For every film and film music fan this book is essential.
Reviewer
Ian Lace
Editor Film Music on the Web (UK)
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