A film score is inextricably linked with the image, it is composed according to the wishes of the director; sometimes it becomes a separate sphere of art. The beauty of the intertwined, overlapped melodic lines spun from dreams and longings and the depth of the harmonic structures occasionally introduce the listener into an unreal, irrational world, a world of illusion, dreams... I couldn't resist them - Maksym Rzeminski

Ralph Vaughan Williams composed in a wide variety of genres, and film music became a significant part of his output in the latter decades of a long and distinguished career. He viewed film scores as more than just ephemera, seeking to "intensify" the spirit of the whole" in wartime productions such as the defiantly anti-Nazi 49th Parallel and Coastal Command, in which the graceful romance of sea-planes sends the spirits soaring. The haunting and evocative atmosphere of The Flemish Farm contrasts with Three Portraits that evoke the first Elizabethan age and announce the springtime of the second.

This fourth album from Neeme Jarvi and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande explores the music of Jacques Ibert. Although Ibert’s work is starkly contrasting from piece to piece, all of his compositions show his deftness with their strong melodic lines and vigorous ostinato patterns. These recordings were taken in Geneva’s Victoria Hall, and the outstanding acoustics are easily heard on this recording.

Review:

Järvi gives us a darker Divertissement than usual. The humor is mordant rather than breezy, the tone at times acerbic. But the shimmering Nocturne, with its poised piano solo, transports us into a sensual world more fully explored in Escales…, and the latter gets one of its finest performances on disc, superbly nuanced, and quite exquisitely played.

It’s the rest of the CD, though, that makes it special. The Suite symphonique, ‘Paris’ swerves garishly between the mechanism of Pacific 231 and the classiest of foxtrots and waltzes. The sad, haunting Sarabande pour Dulcinée comes from the soundtrack for George Pabst’s 1933 film Don Quichotte. Ibert was also a master of the pièce d’occasion, and Järvi includes the riotous Bacchanale and the grandiose Ouverture de fête.

Ibert emerges from it all as a fine composer, whose unity lies in his almost impudent diversity, and who is often far from frivolous as some have maintained. And the disc allows Järvi to show off his Swiss orchestra to perfection. Very fine.

– Gramophone

This new release contains compositions from Hong Kong TV and Movie Classics. Violinist Takako Nishizaki is the featured soloist on this recording. The works are performed here by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Henry Shek, Varujan Kojian, and Kenneth Jean.

Victor Young was one of Hollywood's busiest and most esteemed film composers, his upbeat and engaging style ensuring that viewers left the cinema with a catchy tune in their ears. His lively circus march captures the spirit of The Greatest Show on Earth, and his Broadway-cum-Rachmaninov and eerie score for The Uninvited with it's hit tune Stella by Starlight was pivotal to arguably the best Hollywood ghost story ever produced. The animated Gulliver's Travels relied heavily for it's charm and dramatic impact on Young's fabulous orchestrations, while the tobacco dynasty drama Bright Leaf inspired one of his most restrained and thoughtful film scores.

Conan the Barbarian is a 1982 adventure film, directed and co-written by John Milius. It was his intention to create an opera in the form of a film. Since the opera contains very little dialogue, he used the music to support the story line. The music composed by Basil Poledouris (1945-2006) conveys a sense of power and energy but also expresses many tender moments. The superb Glatter-Götz/Rosales organ in Claremont, California was designed to inspire creativity and innovation, and Philipp Pelster's vision in making a complete film-score transcription especially for the unique possibilities of this instrument transforms the orchestral colors of the original to generate a completely new and richly rewarding musical experience.

John Huston’s 1956 film adaptation of Melville’s epic novel Moby Dick is a genuine grand movie adventure. For it, Phillip Sainton (1897-1967) produced one of the most vibrant “sea scores” ever written, from the shimmering, rhapsodic depictions of the becalmed ocean to the thrilling, earth-shaking whale motif. Including music omitted from the soundtrack, this recording was widely acclaimed upon its original release, with Gramophone considering the score to be “music of richly stocked imagination…” “… anyone who enjoys Finzi and Howells will find Sainton’s music equally appealing …” (ClassicsToday)

• A legend in British concert halls, Sir Malcolm Arnold was also in demand as a composer of film music in Hollywood and beyond. • Including an overture for the New York premiere, the score for The Roots of Heaven adds drama and atmosphere to the story of one man's crusade to save African elephants from extinction. • David Copperfield was Arnold's last film score and one of his most expressive and memorable, summed up as 'truly amazing' by director Delbert Mann. • Classics Today.com has described this recording as 'a treat for Arnold fans and movie buffs alike. ' • Recorded at the Mosfilm Studio, Moscow, 4-7 April 2000 by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Stromberg. • The score restorations were realized by John W. Morgan, who, with Mr. Stromberg amongst others has, since the early 90s, worked in reconstructing and re-recording the great symphonic film scores composed during Hollywood's Golden Age of the mid 30s to the late 50s.

This disc was one of Ian Lace’s Recommended Original Film Score Recordings when first issued at full price as Marco Polo 8.223314. Here it resurfaces at upper bargain price.

Khachaturian, like many another composer, major and lesser, in Soviet Russia, turned his hand to the cinema and did so pretty extensively. This was a great leveller, a ready source of income and a means of reaching out to mass audiences across the Union. The pity is that we see so few of those films. If we think at all about them we much more readily accept seeing them written off as the work of political hacks. The composer’s first effort – of eighteen - was the film Pepo written for the Armenian Film Board a few years before his First Symphony (1934). His last film dated from 1960.

Here are suites assembled from the music for two of Khachaturian’s cinema scores. They are played for all they are worth. Adherents of this composer and of twentieth century music of the USSR will want to hear how he fared in dealing with the silver screen.

The Battle of Stalingrad original score ran to some two hours. The titles give us some impression of what is featured in this suite: I. A City on the Volga - II. The Invasion; IIIa. Stalingrad in Flames; IIIb. The Enemy is doomed; IV. For our Motherland; To the Attack! - Eternal Glory to the Heroes; V. To Victory - VI. There is a Cliff on the Volga. Much of this is urgent and not specially subtle – then again this is not meant to be about subtlety. The music often has a furious seething energy typical of the militaristic bravado found in the music for the Roman legionaries in Spartacus. We also hear little half-echoes of The Great Gate of Kiev. There are some glowing interludes such as that to be found in the almost Bridge-like battlefield bleakness of tr. 3 and at the close of tr. 4 (Eternal Glory to the Heroes). There are also moments that seem to evoke the composer’s great ballets – especially Spartacus. The cheery brassy march that is To Victory is noticeably purged of the ferocity to be found in the turbulent flag-waving first movement. This could almost be a march by Arthur Bliss. There’s a brass band version of the suite on Lawo which Nick Barnard did not think much of.

Both Chandos and Capriccio have done extensive series of the film music of Shostakovich. No such thorough efforts have gone in Khachaturian’s direction. There has been this single disc from Naxos and some film suites from ASV. Indeed fifteen minutes of Loris Tjeknavorian’s take on The Battle of Stalingrad was issued on Alto. It was originally issued with the Second Symphony.

If the Stalingrad score’s gaudy virtues are embraced, often at the expense of the more understated and nuanced, Othello from 1955 is much more multi-faceted. This is as befits a presumably fairly classy Shakespeare film in a translation made by Boris Pasternak – he of Doctor Zhivago fame. The Prologue and Intermezzo is especially touching with a memorable tolling solo violin which returns in the finale. There’s also some extremely inventive writing in a mode recalling Prokofiev who had died two years before this film. The Desdemona Arioso is a swellingly emotional vocalise for soprano with orchestra with more than few links with the famous Adagio from Spartacus. The little Venice Nocturne (tr.4) is a lovely miniature, showing as does much of this score, that Khachaturian is much more than a peddler of crushingly loud music. The grey psychological aspects of Nocturnal Murder make way for the intensity of Othello’s Despair. The urgently rushing A Fit of Jealousy will have you thinking of the ruthlessly athletic music for Crassus in Spartacus. If Khachaturian indulges in a Hollywood-style choir in the Finale – well, why not, and it is by no means cheesy.

The recording is extremely good despite its 25 year vintage. The notes by the conductor are helpful in placing the score and the films from which this music is drawn.

I hope that at some time, in a world where there are seemingly hundreds of film channels, we will get to see these films.

There you have it: specialist territory maybe but two very welcome substantial suites from the world of Khachaturian’s film music.

– Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Hear the images; see the music. Here in a few words is what touches me in New Wave cinema (Godard, Truffaut, Malle, and Demy). How to bring together the music of these films into a single program? This disc was conceived as an image of what I love in these films. The musical themes were only very slightly arranged and were regarded as raw material, leaving room for respectful improvisation and thematic appropriation, while retaining the greatest uniting principle: freedom. - Stéphane Kerecki

Track Listing
1. Weep You No More Sad Fountains
2. Particular Sum, A
3. My Father's Favorite
4. Preying Penniless Woman
5. Devonshire
6. Not a Beau for Miles
7. All the Better for Her
8. Felicity
9. Patience
10. Grant Me an Interview
11. All the Delights of the Season
12. Steam Engine
13. Willoughby
14. Miss Grey
15. Excellent Notion
16. Leaving London
17. Combe Magna
18. To Die for Love
19. There Is Nothing Lost
20. Throw the Coins
21. Dreame, The

Personnel includes: Robert Ziegler (conductor); Jane Eaglen (vocals); Peter Manning (concertmaster); Jonathan Snowdon (flute); Richard Morgan (oboe); Robert Hill (clarinet); Tony Hymas (piano).

Recorded at Air Studios - Lyndhurst Hall, Lyndhurst, England. Includes liner notes by Ang Lee.

Personnel: Jonathan Snowden (flute); Robert Hill (clarinet); Richard Morgan (oboe); Tony Hymas (piano).

Liner Note Author: Ang Lee.

Recording information: Air Studios, Lyndhurst Hall, London, England.

Patrick Doyle began his career in film music writing scores for Kenneth Branagh's films -- but he didn't receive his first Oscar nomination until he wrote this one for Branagh's then-wife, Emma Thompson (whose magic touch with the Academy landed her almost annual nominations in the 1990s). Since then, Doyle seems to have joined the small group of score writers who get voted in year after year by the old boys' club that is the Academy's musical wing. However, this is not Doyle's best work -- most of it simply recycles melodic phrases from his previous stuff. Nonetheless, Sense and Sensibility has a pleasant romanticism in its orchestrations, and the vocal solos by renowned soprano Jane Eaglen are quite good. ~ Darryl Cater

Track Listing
1. House of Henry Jekyll, The - (opening credits, with London Symphony Orchestra)
2. Birth of Hyde, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
3. Announcement, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
4. Story of the Scars, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
5. Mary's Errand - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
6. Mrs. Farraday's - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
7. It Comes in Like the Tide - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
8. Mary Meets Hyde - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
9. Shopping Trip, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
10. Butler's Night Off - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
11. Haffinger's - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
12. Transformation, The - (with London Symphony Orchestra)
13. Mary Reilly - (end credits, with London Symphony Orchestra)

The London Symphony Orchestra includes: George Fenton (conductor); Lucia Lin, Janice Graham (leader, solo violin).

Recorded at CTS Studios and Abbey Road Studios, London, England.

Personnel: Lucia Lin, Janice Graham (violin).

Recording information: CTS Studios, London, England; EMI Abbey Road Studios, London, England.

George Fenton's score for the artsy horror film Mary Reilly is appropriately gothic and haunting, capturing the essence of the movie. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

RACHMANINOFF The Bells. 1 PROKOFIEV Alexander Nevsky 2 • Evgeny Svetlanov, cond; 1 Daniil Shtoda (ten); 1 Elena Prokina (sop); 1 Sergei Leiferkus (bs); 2 Alfreda Hodgson (mez); 1 BBC SO & Ch; 2 Philharmonia O & Ch • ICA ICAC 5069 (78:30) Live: London 1 4/19/2002, 2 1/30/1988


Sometimes, archive recordings have the air of, “Well, as long as we have access to it, let’s release it on CD.” Some of ICA Classics’s BBC discs have presented fairly unexceptional music-making, to say the least. Here, though, we have one absolutely fabulous performance ( The Bells ) and one very good one ( Alexander Nevsky ), and I would even give them preference over Svetlanov’s studio recordings of these same works.


With gorgeous live sound to boot, this version of The Bells really rings my chimes, so to speak. This is a work that stands or falls with the quality of the chorus. When I first auditioned this disc, I was unaware that I was not hearing a native Russian group; that’s how good the BBC Symphony Chorus is here. Furthermore, some recordings of this work content themselves with wimpy or emotionally anonymous soloists. Tenor Daniil Shtoda, on the other hand, displays brilliance of both sound and temperament, and the first movement, depicting the silver sleigh bells of youth, has great élan. Sergei Leiferkus is appropriately mournful in the funereal fourth movement; as with Shtoda, familiarity with the language and the style pays off. I am less impressed with soprano Elena Prokina, who is affected by what used to be called a “Slavic wobble,” but even she convinces this listener with the involvement of her singing. Svetlanov tended to get slower as he got older. Here, though, he never drags, and he points up the contrasts between the four movements with vivid color and attention to mood. The booklet note indicates that he looked frail on this occasion, and in fact, he died just a few weeks later. There’s nothing infirm about his conducting here, though.


The sound in Alexander Nevsky is more recessed and even a little muffled, although not fatally so. It doesn’t shoot the performance in the foot, but of course this is music that benefits from as much sonic realism as engineers, live or in the studio, can muster. Svetlanov is more introspective here. I get the feeling that he was trying to purge the score of its inherent vulgarity without cutting down on its excitement. If that was the case, he largely succeeded. The Philharmonia Chorus can’t hide its Englishness (for better or worse) and mezzo Alfreda Hodgson is rather maternal in her sixth-movement solo. Still, there is a lot to like here. In some ways, this is like André Previn’s EMI studio recording in its refusal to confuse weight with ponderousness, its avoidance of bombast, and its rather sensitive demeanor. (I recently discovered the Previn on an English EMI LP, and it immediately moved to the top of my list, so my comparing Svetlanov to Previn is meant as high praise.) It’s better than Svetlanov’s harshly recorded and only superficially exciting Soviet-era studio recording.


No sung texts are included, but do you really need them? The booklet note includes an interesting bit of trivia: As a child, Svetlanov appeared onstage in the role of Trouble in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly . He also made, according to annotator Colin Anderson’s reckoning, more than 3,000 recordings for Russian, Japanese, French, British, and Dutch companies. And you thought Neeme Järvi made a lot of CDs!


I’d get this if I were you.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

BARBER Violin Concerto. KORNGOLD Violin Concerto. WAXMAN Carmen Fantasy & • Alexander Gilman (vn); Perry So, cond; Cape Town PO • OEHMS 799 (68: 09)


& WILLIAMS Schindler’s List: Theme


Except for John Williams’s theme from Schindler’s List , the compositions on violinist Alexander Gilman’s program with Perry So conducting the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra all suffered a certain amount of neglect after their first performances and recordings. Isaac Stern (and Louis Kaufman and Robert Gerle) brought Samuel Barber’s concerto to the attention of listeners, and now it has just about entered the repertoire, and students adopt it for competitions. Alexander Gilman produces a glowing tone from his Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin, but the engineers don’t set him so far forward as Columbia’s did Isaac Stern; if Gilman plays with less ruddy energy, he more than compensates for it in subtlety and refinement. His generally more relaxed approach doesn’t prevent him or the orchestra from soaring in the climactic moments. Oehms’s engineers have set him just a bit forward, with just enough of the spotlight focused on him to lend him soloistic prominence. He and So take their time in the slow movement without giving even a hint of immobility; in the middle section, his tone grows temporarily as glutinous as Mischa Elman’s. And at last, alchemist Gilman transmutes even the finale’s most mechanical perpetual-motion elements into musical gold.


Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s concerto (like Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s) has also come a long way from the days in which Jascha Heifetz’s recording might have intimidated other violinists from trying their hands in the work (even if Irving Kolodin’s dictum “more corn than gold” hadn’t already done so) but also for years represented the only entry into the catalog. In the last decade, especially, many violinists have taken it up, many of them, notably perhaps Nikolaj Znaider (RCA 710336, Fanfare 32:6) taking the first movement at a much slower tempo than Heifetz’s. But while playing the movement more slowly for musical reasons may be defensible, Gilman seems also to struggle in its quicksilver technical passagework, though he soars in its rhapsodic lyrical moments (at least he attacks the double-stops about halfway through the movement with a sort of abrasive gusto). Still, at almost 10 minutes, the first movement sounds very slow, creating despair that the expected climaxes will never arrive. Heifetz took 7:47 in his 1953 studio recording and 7:46—always consistent, that Heifetz—in a 1947 live performance; but Anne-Sophie Mutter took 8:40; Philippe Quint, 8:48; James Ehnes, 8:57; Gil Shaham, 9:03; and Znaider, as mentioned, 9:19, and finally, Gilman, at 9:44, an obvious pattern. The slow movement also seems to stall in this way, although the lush sonorities that So draws from the orchestra gives listeners something to enjoy in the waiting room; Gilman’s corresponding timbral lushness extends from the top to the bottom of his violin’s range, and together violin and orchestra collaborate in a richly atmospheric reading of the movement. The tranquil conclusion, despite its near immobility, provides an effective lull before the boisterous intrusion of the finale’s theme. But Gilman balances percussive aspects with Heifetz’s penetrating clarity in the upper registers during the finale’s lyrical interludes, and fashions a climax of cinematic sweep.


Franz Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy , now, according to some, preferred to Sarasate’s similar work by Russian violinists, also has cinematic connections—and again to Heifetz, with whom negotiations for playing the violin solos in Humoresque broke down (Stern finally being engaged). Nevertheless, Heifetz played and programmed the work from the beginning. Gilman’s reading sounds at the same time a bit warmer and perhaps a bit cheekier, and even a bit more seductive. The program concludes with a rather lugubrious reading of the theme from John Williams’s score to Schindler’s List.


Those seeking these particular works on CD should find Gilman’s readings more than satisfactory even if Heifetz still reigns supreme in Korngold, with either Heifetz or Leonid Kogan occupying similar positions in Waxman’s chestnut—at least for sheer brilliance. Warmly recommended.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Track Listing
1. Uncertain Future (Main Title)
2. Shelby & Percy
3. Hannah's Fall
4. Mystery of Night, The
5. Open for Business
6. Remembering Eli
7. Trees, The
8. Gift from the Forest, A
9. Reading the Letters
10. Healing Balm, A
11. New Life for Gilead, A
12. Wrongful Blame
13. Desperate Decision, A
14. Care of the Spitfire Grill

Original score written by James Horner.

Audio Mixer: Shawn Murphy.

Recording information: Todd-AO Scoring Stage, Studio City, CA.

The soundtrack to the popular independent film The Spitfire Grill contains James Horner's subtle, moving score that works as an individual piece of music, not just as pleasant sonic wallpaper. It's a lovely score and one that proves that Horner, who has also written the music for Braveheart, Field of Dreams, and Alien, is one of the finest film composers of his era. ~ Rodney Batdorf

Without doubt this is one of the finest all-round achievements by Naxos.

At the risk of courting the charge of hyperbole I would venture this CD as one of the most significant Shostakovich releases in recent years. Fine though the award-laden Petrenko symphony cycle undoubtedly is, let's be honest we already know that is an extraordinary group of works and most have received superb performances before. The score presented here is as significant as it is relatively unknown and this new recording can lay fair claim to being definitive. My reasoning runs as follows; Shostakovich was one of the most important Soviet composers. The Soviet Union was the first state to recognise the power of cinema to influence mass mood and opinion. In the late 1920s the cultural elite of the Soviet Union were still being empowered by the state to produce work that was radical and revolutionary. Exploring utopian ideals and cinema was regarded as being at the forefront of the new radical arts. In the era of Silent Cinema the dedicated film-score was still comparatively new and as such had to carry the dramatic and emotional non-visual weight of the story. Shostakovich had first-hand practical experience of playing for film - this gave him a practitioner’s insight into what would ‘work’ that was simply not part of the skill set of any composer before or probably since. As the liner accurately points out - for all the deprivation and residual violence abroad in the new Soviet State this was an age of idealism and hope. Shostakovich had yet to have his idealistic vision of communism curdled by the cynical realities of living in a totalitarian state. He poured into this score the best that the idiom would allow.
 
Whether measured by the yardstick of the history of cinema, the Soviet Union or simply as part of the Shostakovich oeuvre this is an important release. Add to that the fact that this recording offers the most complete, skilfully reconstructed and authentic - as far as it uses the original 14 player line-up - rendition of the score yet made. It becomes a compulsory purchase. This is the third release of Shostakovich film scores conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald. Very fine indeed though the previous two have been I consider this the best so far. Not that the earlier issues lacked for anything in terms of performing or interpretative quality - simply that this work is more significant than the others on just about every level. Its importance is reflected in the fact that elements of the score have been recorded several times in the past although only the - also fine - version from James Judd on Capriccio with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra comes close to matching the actual quantity of music recorded. The next most extended sequence - from Valeri Polyansky and his Russian State Symphony Orchestra on Chandos (CHAN 9600) - contains some 44 minutes of the score - less than half of Fitz-Gerald’s epic traversal. A pithier selection is offered by Gennady Rohzdestvensky (Russian Disc RDCD11064). This was my introduction to this score in its original Melodiya LP version (later reissued as ASD3381) and I still enjoy its ribald cabaret character. My sole observation of this new Naxos performance - and it is an observation not a quibble - is that the chamber scale and super-refined quality of the playing fractionally detracts from the pure theatre of the work. When I was a student at the Guildhall School of Music in London - around 1983 I guess - they staged a viewing of this score accompanied by one of the college orchestras. To this day the power of the film and accompanying score lives with me. I strongly suggest that any readers who ever have the opportunity to see this performed live should leap at the chance. It is a magnificent piece of work and one that shows how even at the tender age of 23 Shostakovich understood the compelling power of the moving image. The very valid argument advanced by Fitz-Gerald for using chamber scale forces is that these are the maximum resources that Shostakovich would have had for the premiere. My counter-argument is that every silent movie score would be written with a degree of inherent elasticity. I find it hard to imagine for a moment that Shostakovich would not have preferred more players at the premiere - certainly many of the dramatic passages in the score do not sound as though they are intended for such a chamber group. That being said, Shostakovich was commissioned to provide a smaller orchestration suitable for use in the bulk of Soviet cinemas. Indeed reluctant musical directors often reverted to using generic music when the film was shown rather than attempting the complexities of this new score.
 
Every other recording has opted for a full standard orchestra. Although I do naturally veer towards the bigger sound the more I hear this performance the more I realise that this is a score full of proper music of considerable range and power. Initial impressions are of a riot of colour and witty referencing of popular period tunes from the Marseillaise to Offenbach. The New Babylon of the title refers to a department store which in turn is a metaphor for the decadent Paris pre the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The ensuing uprising and short-lived Paris Commune provided the early Soviet State with a historic precedent for their own revolution. Lessons learnt from the failure of the Commune influenced the thinking of both Marx and Lenin. Musical experts differ on whether Shostakovich used these melodies because they embodied all things despicably bourgeois or simply because they are rather good tunes. I tend towards the latter opinion - any young composer who can choose as his first dramatic work a setting of Gogol - The Nose - with its dyspeptic view of authority and institutions is not going to become a star-struck-slogan-wielding-party-line-puller two opus numbers later. At the heart of Shostakovich’s abiding genius is the acidic cynicism that clots and curdles even his most superficially benign music.
 
Fitz-Gerald conducts the Basel Sinfonietta and they prove to be stunningly fine collaborators. The scoring is for a string quartet plus bass, a woodwind quintet and a brass group of a second horn, two trumpets - although the second is there simply to relieve the work-load on the first player rather than having an independent part - and a trombone. The line-up is completed by a piano and three percussion. Again this number allows for ease of changes rather than necessity. The use of this essentially chamber ensemble creates an aural world that instantly delineates the composer's deft scoring. For the first time I heard a positively Gallic wit at work, very much along the lines of Ibert's Divertissement although, as always with Shostakovich, you feel a bleak cold despair might be lingering in the shadows. The spirit of "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" clouds the celebrations. Another fascinating characteristic is developed here by the composer. In collaboration with the film-makers Shostakovich chose not to "illustrate the frame". When critics wish to deride a work the ultimate insult is to say its sounds like film music. This is a short-hand for saying it treats emotions/ideas/situations in an obvious and direct manner - in other words it illustrates the frame. Shostakovich does the reverse - if the image is happy, the music is sad, epic - petty. Its a crazy almost anarchic ploy but one that makes for an extraordinarily powerful juxtaposition of sight and sound. The problem we have here is that we are divorced from the image and wonderful though that is it cannot be anything less than a fraction of the whole.
 
Across the two discs the music is presented as a continuous flow of music as it occurred in each of the film's eight reels. The abiding impression is of a kaleidoscopic riot of sounds and impressions, fragments of musical stories, passing characters and changing mood. There is a hedonistic delight in the sheer indulgence of influence and pastiche. No real surprise to read that the original score quickly fell into disuse - it was both too hard for the average cinema player and too subversive for musicians brought up on a diet of illustrative generic music and excerpted 'classics'. From a historical perspective the quite remarkable thing is that as late as his Op.145 - his Suite on verses by Michaelangelo Shostakovich was applying exactly the same principle of contrast. There a verse with the slightly daunting title Immortality is set to an accompaniment of a piccolo whistling a tune any paperboy would be proud of. Back with New Babylon Fitz-Gerald has more practical experience of conducting this score in context with the film than any other person. This deep knowledge converts into a performance that is perfectly paced and remarkably finds a unity, a through-line in the midst of the mayhem. Allied to the virtuosic playing of his Swiss Orchestra and you will appreciate the level of achievement. The superlatives do not stop there. The engineering is first rate. The sound is quite close, certainly very detailed but it treads the tricky narrow line between large chamber group or small orchestra. The scale of the group is very effectively caught allowing the intimate passages to beguile while the bigger sequences have an impressive impact. Yes I do miss the sheer extra weight that Judd is able to deploy or the uniquely sly and sarcastic Rozhdestvensky. I repeat, the more I listened the more I was converted to the style of this version.

The booklet is surely Naxos' finest yet. Once one gets past the obligatory I-need-to-get-my-eyes-tested minute font this is packed with fascinating information, film stills and even a facsimile page of the original score. Fitz-Gerald has had to reconstruct the final part of the final reel because late in the film's production the ending changed turning the original bleak ending into something more positive. Fascinatingly we have two essays by Shostakovich scholars which give different interpretations for this change. One by David Robinson feels the changes were artistically driven whilst the other by John Riley cites political expediency. Both are full of fascinating insights. Riley provides a detailed synopsis and the notes are completed by an article by Fitz-Gerald outlining the long overdue restoration and reappraisal of this very important score. Don’t listen to this score expecting the profundity of the composer’s greatest work - that was never the remit here. Treated as a musico-social document - as well as containing much wonderfully entertaining music - this is a magnificent achievement from all concerned from composer to performers and the production team.

Curiously for a disc that is literally definitive it does not make me want to throw away either of the two other versions I cherish. Both Judd and Rozhdestvensky in their very differing ways offer valid alternative insights into this box of delights of a score. Judd with his full orchestra gains in impact during the set-piece sequences whilst Rozhdestvensky benefits from an authentically edgy Russian sound and gleeful eccentricity that is quite wonderful. The extra music that has been constructed to cover the discarded ending is effective and suitable but you will have made your mind up about this score and the performance way before that final sequence is reached. Fitz-Gerald achieves an ideal balance with his super-slick players able to slip from queasy waltz to buffoon’s gallop or poignant interlude in an instant. Remarkable results are achieved by ensembles these days in hot-house conditions of read/record. However when you hear a well rehearsed, convincingly argued performance of music with which the players are familiar the benefits are both obvious and great.

Without doubt this is one of the finest all-round achievements by Naxos. 

– Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

Also featuring the BBC National Chorus of Wales is several selections.

Brian Easdale was a prolific composer whose extensive output covered most genres, from orchestral pieces, concertos, and choral works, including a mass for the new Coventry Cathedral, to chamber compositions. However Easdale is today most well-known for his film scores, particularly The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus

Part of Chandos’ film music series with Rumon Gamba, the works on this release showcase Easdale’s career in film with music from, among others, The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and The Battle of the River Plate.

In his youth, Easdale attended the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition with such prominent figures as Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and Gordon Jacob, conducting with Malcolm Sargent, and organ with Arnold Goldsborough. As a jobbing musician he undertook arranging projects, working most notably on such scores by Benjamin Britten as the Soirées musicales and the Piano Concerto. He also orchestrated Britten’s On the Frontier for a production at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge in 1939, before spending much of the war in Ceylon and India working on documentaries for their governments’ film units. Returning to Britain in 1946, he was invited by the masterful film making team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, also known as The Archers, to write an exotic dance for Jean Simmons to perform in their forthcoming film, Black Narcissus, and ended up composing the whole score. The film is a veritable masterpiece of melodrama with highly dramatic music to match.

The involvement of Easdale in Black Narcissus effectively launched his career in film music and led him to other projects, most notably The Red Shoes (1948) for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Music Score. This is one of the most iconoclastic films in the Pantheon of British Cinema. Given a highly atmospheric score, the film concerns a traveling ballet company and tells the story of a young hopeful ballerina, catapulted into stardom and wrestling with her love for a composer and the pull of her career. In the end it becomes too much of a fight and while on tour with the company in Monte Carlo, she leaps to her death.

The Battle of the River Plate (1956) is also worth a separate mention. A semi-documentary account of the trapping of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in Montevideo harbour, and her subsequent scuttling, the film was commercially very successful. The two movements recorded here are the Prelude (heard over the main titles and opening scene with narration) and a March, the concert version of which was created by Easdale after the film’s release.

Romantic music for the screen - smooth and touching.



GUNNING Poirot Variants. 1 La Móme Piaf. 2 Under Suspicion. Cold Lazarus. Rosemary and Thyme Caprice. 3 Rebecca. 4 Pollyanna. Firelight. When the Whales Came. 5 The Hollow. 5 Little Pigs. 6 Lighthouse Hill • Rumon Gamba, cond; BBC Phil; 1 Martin Robertson(sax); 2,5 Nicole Tibbels (sop); 2 Matthew Compton (acc); 3 Craig Ogden (gtr); 4 Julia Bradshaw (vc); 6 Yuri Torchinsky (vn) • CHANDOS 10625 (75:50)


Some 20 years ago a friend alerted me to a limited-edition recording of the score for a British television documentary, Yorkshire Glory . This gloriously lyrical music in a richly pastoral vein was my introduction to the work of Christopher Gunning (b.1944), a composer who is reinvigorating the timeless tradition of Vaughan Williams, Holst, Finzi, et al. However, this pupil of Richard Rodney Bennett as well as Edmund Rubbra can, when appropriate, also demonstrate an acute awareness of postwar developments in English music, as this generous and varied compendium of his film and television music over the past two decades makes clear.


This collection marks the first time in Chandos’s indispensable movie-music series when a living composer has directly participated in the presentation of his scores. Gunning has prepared special versions for this particular project in the form of small-scaled but through-composed tone poems, not the customary sequence of disconnected excerpts. So the listener can experience this disc as a kind of multimovement suite of diverse moods, because of the high consistency and individuality of the writing.


Although only a few of the films and television series will be familiar to American audiences, two of the well-known highlights open the program. The Poirot Variants for saxophone and orchestra—a totally independent work from the composer who gave us the lovely Thames Rhapsody for the same combination (available on a Dutton Epoch disc of several years ago)—is based on the well-known wily and insinuating theme that introduced the popular BBC series starring David Suchet. The following piece, for accordion and orchestra, is derived from music for the acclaimed film biography of French legendary singer Edith Piaf, La Vie en Rose . The alternation of film and television scores continues with the 1990s thriller Under Suspicion starring Liam Neeson, and the great television dramatist Dennis Potter’s final effort, Cold Lazarus. Both of these illustrate Gunning’s darker and more melodramatic side.


Then follow a number of lesser-known television productions: a sprightly, folk-inflected caprice for the series Rosemary and Thyme ; yet another adaptation of the romantic perennial Rebecca (a haunting prelude for cello and orchestra); the family-styled Pollyanna (full of the usual good tunes); two individual Poirot episodes— The Hollow and Five Little Pigs— and finally an obscure British film (never issued here), Lighthouse Hill.


The most impressive compilations here are drawn from two somewhat better-known films, the romantic dramas Firelight of 1997 and When the Whales Came, the earliest score included, from 1989, where Gunning’s use of an eerie soprano vocalise recalls Vaughan Williams’s Scott of the Antarctic music. Both of these emphasize Gunning’s exceptionally scenic imagination and his natural gift for the telling and memorable theme garbed in a lustrous orchestration.


As always in this series, conductor Rumon Gamba, the BBC Philharmonic, and the Chandos recording staff offer this endlessly appealing music in the best possible light. Anyone who loves the traditional school of English music will not be disappointed.


FANFARE: Paul A. Snook


The case of Christopher Gunning has been well and truly taken up by Chandos. Last year we had two of his six symphonies and the oboe concerto (review). Now the genre that brought him to wide attention is tackled.

It's mostly suave music for television. We start with the Poirot Variants for sax and orchestra. This is a combination he has tackled before in On Hungerford Bridge on ASV (review). A smooth fantasy touches on train rhythms, Buenos Aires dance-halls and a worldly romantic lassitude. Martin Robertson's saxophone presents the music without rough edges, subtle and undulating: not a trace of rasp. La Môme Piaf - 2007 film – quite rightly fears no cliché in deploying the accordion. It's all very romantic. Under Suspicion leaves such smoothness behind in a gruff nightmare-image speaking of the ruptured emotional landscapes of late Malcolm Arnold … though tenderness does arrive. The Cold Lazarus (1996) music is at first ascetic and doom-laden with whip-like dactyls reaching out. From this Fahrenheit 451 chill arises the most glorious romantic theme - almost Born Free or Howard Hanson Second Symphony. The Rosemary and Thyme Caprice has the closely recorded Craig Ogden confiding Scarborough Fair to the listener in an English countryside evocation. Rebecca showcases the cellist Julia Bradshaw in another dark-clouded piece completely in keeping with the brooding and intensely romantic spirit of the Daphne du Maurier book. It's well worth hearing. Innocent folk voices abound in Pollyana which is heavily freighted with charm. Woodwind solos and piano are prominent. Firelight - 1997 film - is among his most popular scores yet is quite low key and contained. This is not a grand statement and the music is heavily characterised by Yuri Torchinsky's tremblingly vulnerable violin. When the Whales Came - 1989 film - is quite naturally threaded through with the spirit of the sea. There are added elements such as a slowed whale-song recording (like Hovhaness and George Crumb, in that sense only) and a vocalising soprano. The Hollow and Five Little Pigs are from Poirot episodes. The first is very romantic and memorable. The second is sly and ambivalent in mood as voiced by the solo violin. Lighthouse Hill - film, 2004 - is again hyper-romantic and rounded in its progress. I was rather sad that there was nothing here from Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male or from Porterhouse Blue or from Middlemarch.

A wide soundstage complements a lavish audio image each of which articulates the often simple textures yet meets with a fierce embrace the grander statements.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International