Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

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

Pulitzer Prize winner in Music, David Lang has scored the soundtrack for the new movie: (Untitled), an independent movie about a composer's life featuring actor Adam Goldberg. The movie opens on October 23rd. David Lang says, " Most of the time film music is in the background, setting the mood or advancing the story in a supporting role. This project was different. Because the leading character is a composer, it is a film as much about musical development as it is about character development."

Conceived as a reimagining of director D.W. Griffith’s infamously racist 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, Rebirth of a Nation, recorded with the Kronos Quartet, is a controversial and culturally significant project examining how “…exploitation and political corruption still haunt the world to this day, but in radically different forms.” + Originally commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Weiner Festwochen and the Festival d’Automne a Paris, the project was Paul D. Miller’s first large-scale multimedia performance piece, and has been performed around the world, from the Sydney Festival to the Herod Atticus Amphitheater, more than fifty times. + Paul D. Miller is probably most well-known as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. + He has recorded a huge volume of music and collaborated with a wide variety of musicians and composers, Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kronos Quartet, Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono and Thurston Moore among them. + He also composed and recorded the score for the Cannes and Sundance Award-winning film Slam, starring acclaimed poet Saul Williams, and produced material on Yoko Ono’s recent album Yes, I’m a Witch.

Davis, C.: Understudy (The)

Ti Amo is Canadian guitarist and composer Eric Lemieux's second for Centaur. A concept album, it contains the very best tracks Mr. Lemieux has done for film soundtracks in the past decade. Additionally, there are four supplementary, unreleased original tracks produced with the help of the great Greek singer Natassa Mare Moumtzidou. His influences run the gamut from Gazpar Sanz's counterpoints to contemporary electro-symphonic, and from classical forms to flashy modern fusion styles like Alan Holdsworth's, his aim being to draw surprising and attention-grabbing musical parallels.

Released in July 1940, 'The Sea Hawk' was Korngold's last swashbuckler, and is arguably the finest film ever made in the genre. Certainly it is one of Errol Flynn's greatest films, and had a lavish budget for its time of 1.7m. One of the most difficult assignments of Korngold's career, it required a score of extraordinary length and complexity. The music was superbly multi-layered and thematically complex, literally sweeping the film along and matching its extraordinary visuals. Composition began just two days after the filming had been completed: in a special projection room equipped with a piano, Korngold had the reels of film run for him repeatedly while he improvised his music on the piano to the running footage. Later, he would then complete a full, annotated piano score. His training in the late symphonic traditions served him well. This recording has been very much a personal project for Rumon Gamba who comments, 'as with the rest of the Chandos Film series I very much wanted to keep the music limited to a single disc, instead of being dogged reconstruction of the complete score, including every single cue - some being just a quick trumpet figure or drum roll. I felt it was more important to represent the symphonic sweep of the score which is one of this film's greatest strengths'. Gamba has created a comprehensive 'suite' of six 'movements' that follows the action chronologically and only leaves out some insignificant cues and general repetitions. He continues, 'I believe that hearing Korngold's score in this manner will make for a wonderful listening experience representative of the narrative and in keeping with the spirit of this marvellous picture'. The BBC Philharmonic performs these scores with a symphonic precision and energy familiar with the first volume of Korngold's film music, released in 2005. Reviewing Volume 1, 'Music from the Movies' observed that 'Chandos has been doing great things in the film score re-recording world over recent years...With this release, however, they break new ground...this Chandos CD is for me the crowning achievement so far of what was already an impressive addition to the Golden Age film music'.

Soundtrack to the TV film in four parts, "Jahrestage", directed by Margarethe von Trotta (with Suzanne von Borsody and Mathias Habich in the roles of the protagonists) after the four-part novel by Uwe Johnson. Johnson is - besides Grass and Boll - considered to be one of the leading, unerrent and shrewd, chroniclers of the recent German history. The scenes take the viewer to the former German Democratic Republic of the 1960s and 1970s, the Federal Republic of Germany, New York, and in flashbacks into the Weimar Republic, the so-called "Third Reich", the terrible time of World War II with the difficult post-war situation. At the Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels which took place in Biarritz from 16 to 21 January 2001, the composer Enjott Schneider from Munich, whose stylistically wide-ranging œuvre comprises the opera "Albert - warum?" (Regensburg, 1999), the symphonies "Glockensinfonie. Lied an das Leben" (Domstufenfestspiele Erfurt, 1999) and "Sisyphos" (Herkulessaal Munich, 2001) as well as numerous film musics ("Schlafes Bruder", "23", "Stalingrad", "Das Madchen Rosemarie", etc.), received the golden film award "Fipa d'or" for the best film music ("Meilleure musique originale") in the category "Series et feuilletons". This European prize was awarded to him for his music for the four-part ARD television film "Jahrestage" (directed by Margarethe von Trotta after a novel of Uwe Johnson) which had been released by WERGO on the label ALCRA (ALC 54012) in November 2000.

It is amazing to think that Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, knighted in 1998 for his services to music has written so much music: orchestral works, quartets, concertos, symphonies, operas, ballets, songs, madrigals, jazz pieces and much more - all totalling over 600 items! He has scored over 50 films (including some documentaries in the earlier part of his career). This album comprises a fair cross-section.

Usually we only hear Bennett's celebrated waltz from Murder on the Orient Express so the eleven-minute suite from the 1974 Academy Award nominated score is most welcome. Gamba, aided by Chandos's superbly dynamic and detailed sound, gives a thrilling reading of this glittering, sophisticated music for the smart set travelling on a mission to kill, on Europe's premier train. The music reflects the styles of that hedonistic era between the two world wars: waltzes, tangos and music played in the salon style. There is, as to be expected, an element of murky mystery and swift violence; but there is appealing elegiac material too. But overall, there is the glamour and urgency of the great powerful train itself.

From international sophistication, the prograame turns to a smaller world of rural romantic tragedy and to John Schlesinger's 1967 film of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd starring Julie Christie, Peter Finch, Alan Bates and Terence Stamp. Although the film had mixed reviews, Bennett's score was Oscar-nominated. Bennett wrote some beguiling pastoral themes, notably the poignant Bathsheba love theme. Opposed to this delicacy, is some very astringent, harsh, dissonant folk-like material that underlies the cruel reality of rural life like the loss of the shepherd's (Bates) flock of sheep (they throw themselves over the edge of a cliff) leaving him penniless and unable to pursue his love, Bathsheba. There is also bravado music for the proud, womanising soldier (Stamp), counterbalanced with elegiac material and music that, in its sense of chill isolation, recalls Holst's Egdon Heath.

Bennett has arranged his music for the 1972 film Lady Caroline Lamb as an elegy for orchestra and that Cinderella of the orchestra, the viola. His music for this film, which was about Lady Caroline Lamb's disastrous obsessive love for the poet Lord Byron, is distinguished by a very appealing tender romantic melody that is redolent of the Lady's yearning. The work is presented in two movements. Before the love theme is stated in the first of these, there is headlong skittish, neurotic music portraying the rash, foolish woman. Afterwards comes some comically ironical military music of some pomposity which includes (Lady Lamb's?) sighs before the mood darkens - perhaps signifying Lady Lamb's encroaching madness. The second movement reprises the love music, which becomes the theme for a set of variations: some dreamily nocturnal, some passionate, some troubled. Philip Dukes is a sensitive and refined soloist.

Cynthia Miller adds an ethereal touch, playing her ondes martenot for Bennett's Enchanted April score. This 1991 Merchant Ivory production dealt with the lives and loves of a handful of English ladies spending an idyllic month in an Italian villa. Accordingly, Bennett responded with a mellow nostalgic score, in which the ondes martenot transports the characters, and us, away from the ordinary, everyday world - to somewhere that is extraordinary and enchanted. His music is very delicate, atmospheric and impressionistic; and very reminiscent of both Debussy and Ravel (Ravel in Chinoiserie mode). At one point this delicate fantasy is grounded by the strains of Elgar's Chanson de matin played on a cor anglais but the peaceful idyllic mood is soon reinstated. A lovely work that perhaps is too fragile for its 19-minute length.

The concert is completed by two shorter works: the Nicole's haunting theme from the 1985 TV production, Tender is the Night, although I would argue that this is not its premiere recording for I remember hearing it the soundtrack recording I purchased at that time. I would also argue that Nicole was rehabilitated by the man she married and it was the strain of that work which caused his destruction! The concluding item is the touching and plaintive love theme for Four Weddings and a Funeral that tended to be overshadowed by more familiar pop source music.

Gamba leads the BBC Philharmonic in committed, romantic performances. A delightful album and strongly recommended.

-- Ian Lace, MusicWeb International

Alan Rawsthorne's music was the soundtrack to adventure. Between 1937 and 1964, he scored 27 films, most with a military or adventurer's theme. Bold brass and soaring strings characterize his vivid musical illustrations of conflict and courage.
His music has a larger than life quality, fitting perfectly with the big screen. The regal style originates from a time when movies were still magic and audiences regarded performances as major events. Rawsthorne captures the essence of drama on the epic scale required by the stories. Recorded in 1999 by Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic, this album improves upon the original soundtracks with superior sound quality.

Chandos Movies is one of the best known film music labels in the industry, and has received tremendous critical acclaim. The series is especially associated with the conductor Rumon Gamba, whose undertstanding and enthusiasm for the form shines through. Vaughan Williams's film music ranks amongst the very finest ever written, and this CD contains some excellent examples. What makes this disc so important is that some of the material has never been recorded before, music which has been painstakingly assembled by Chandos' in-house arranger and music researcher, Stephen Hogger. The result is a hugely important release which will be of interest to both film music buffs and fans of Vaughan Williams.

Composed and arranged by Nigel Hess Recorded and mixed by Toby Alington, Keith Grant and Tony Philpot at CTS, PRT, West Heath, Olympic and BBC TV Music Studios, London Producer(s) Nigel Hess

Music between Ennio Morricone and Charles Gounod with reminiscences of the music of the film "Stalingrad". Enjott Schneider has done it again: he added just the right musical touch to a very emotional film. The television film by Jo Baier, several times winner of the renowned Adolf Grimme Award, is the story of a common practice in Tyrol and Switzerland in the 19th century, which can be proven up to the 1930s: the renting or even selling of children from poor peasants' families at children's markets in Swabia as cheap labor. - A film with Tobias Moretti, Vadim Glowna and J�rgen Tarrach. Booklet contains liner notes in German only.

Chandos Movies is one of the best-known film-music based labels in the industry, and has received tremendous critical acclaim. The series is especially associated with the conductor Rumon Gamba, whose understanding of and enthusiasm for the genre is famous. Vaughan Williams' film music ranks amongst the very finest ever written, and this CD includes some of his best examples. This disc is especially important as some of the material has never been recorded before. The result is a hugely important release which will be of interest to both film music buffs and fans of Vaughan Williams.

Addison's scores frequently pay hommage to the time-honoured tradition in film music, which dates back to the silent film era, of alluding to well-known tunes and indulging in innocent tunefulness, yet the scores have achieved iconic status and contributed to turning many of the films into the national treasures they are today. This new addition to the Chandos Movies label, which has been highly sought-after, is sure to be a highlight amongst many gems.

Chandos once again notch up a lavish production in every single aspect.

This is a very generously timed and magnificently performed and recorded disc. It’s a red letter event for the Herrmann literature.

The last few years have been exciting ones for Herrmann fans. Sad to say this has not involved a new recording of the opera Wuthering Heights; nor even a reissue of the rather one-dimensional sounding Unicorn Souvenir set (UKCD2050-52). However the following pallet-full is not to be sniffed at. Decca Eloquence (Australia) will reissue Herrmann conducting The Planets with the LPO (1970). Tribute’s Rolls Royce revivals look likely to include a new and typically resplendent Stromberg-Moscow collaboration though no one is saying which score yet. Andrew Rose’s Pristine are resurrecting what I fervently hope will be the first of a series of radio acetate transcriptions of Herrmann’s CBS Symphony Orchestra years. From 1945 they have Handel: Water Music Suite (arr. Harty); Vaughan Williams Oboe Concerto and Elgar Falstaff caught on Sunday 9 September 1945 PASC202. From the Prometheus label The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad is conducted by “Kurt Graunke and his orchestra” in 1958. It’s a 2 CD issue with the complete original score in mono mixed with the album stereo cues and the original soundtrack album. By report it’s suspected to be conducted by Herrmann with a pickup orchestra in Shepperton although Kurt Graunke certainly existed. There’s also a rare Twisted Nerve/The Bride Wore Black from Bruce Kimmel’s Kritzerland label. It includes The Twisted Nerve LP and The Bride Wore Black 45 rpm on CD – rare items both. The CD runs 28 minutes and is limited to 1200 copies. Now if only Varese-Sarabande could be persuaded to issue a boxed set of their often inspired RSNO/McNeely/Debney re-recordings of scores such as Marnie, Sinbad, Trouble With Harry, Vertigo and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Perhaps Eloquence will follow up their Planets with a reissue of the three Phase Four Film Spectaculars that Herrmann made with the National Phil in the 1970s.

The present Chandos issue is a compelling purchase for Herrmann fans and even for neophytes. It’s recorded with aching clarity and the music-making has a vibrant feel for the idiom. That’s typical of Gamba who taps direct into the fleshy, decaying, sinister, nocturnal, romantic milieu that bridges these two scores.

In much the same way as Chandos and Gamba have made their two Korngold discs compulsory acquisitions so the Herrmann constituency will have to have this one. It’s the first revival of the Hangover Square music as arranged by Stephen Hogger. You may know his name already as he has done so much work for the RVW film score revivals on Chandos. I know about the 1972 revival of Concerto Macabre by Joaquin Achucarro on that iconic Herrmann RCA Classic Film Scores collection (now available from Archiv Music). Others, apart from Achucarro, also recorded the Concerto as part of various film music piano concerto medleys. The Concerto appears here in a new edition which we are told incorporates the composer’s revisions for concert performance. It’s a Lisztian effusion from the same left-field as Totentanz but blended with the lichen and fog so gloriously typical of Herrmann. The marriage of Herrmann’s music-melodrama with the Laird Cregar/Linda Darnell film is made in heaven – or possibly somewhere hotter. In any event it’s a totally apt alliance and the music rewards attention. If the Concerto and the Hogger sequence overlap the listener will not feel cheated. It’s all classic Herrmann and you are hearing music not heard before or at least not in this form. Even in the film music sequence the piano plays a prominent part rather as it does in Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances.

Citizen Kane was Herrmann’s first cinema partnership with Orson Welles. It’s a revered film with many starkly imaginative images which are intensified by Herrmann’s music. The extended score here is way beyond the compact suite featured on the RCA Classic series as master-minded by Charles Gerhardt/George Korngold. It has been recorded before, though not with such Manchester immediacy and allure, by Label X/Prometheus and by Varese-Sarabande (RSNO/McNeely).

The score is very varied. Wild frilly frivolous galops - not a stone’s throw from Offenbach - jostle with romps glaring with Prokofiev-like psychological subtext. Music of piercing regret is heard alongside Romeo and Juliet-inflected (could Herrmann have known the ballet at that time?) poignancy. As illustration take the irresistibly gentle Kane Meets Susan (tr. 8). There’s even some Weill-style sleaze (tr. 11). There’s also that grand operatic aria (complete with full words and translation in the booklet) in which Orla Boylan delivers the goods in a way that Kane’s poor Susan never could. That aria transcends the cod-Grand Siècle idiom and has one wishing that Herrmann had had the luxury of time to write a full opera in this unblushing uber-Lakmé toxic-exotic idiom. It’s clearly the sort of flamboyance that might have featured in Act I of Phantom of the Opera. Boylan puts up a completely credible and ripely enjoyable challenge to the young and unspoilt Kiri Te Kanawa in the aria as recorded by Gerhardt back in 1972.

Chandos once again notch up a lavish production in every single aspect.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Hopefully this will be the first disc in an extended Herrmann project--even if the results aren't quite perfect, they're still very fine. Citizen Kane has been recorded several times, of course, most notably by Joel McNeely and the Scottish National Orchestra (O/P), but this edition gives us basically all of the same music (it runs for nearly fifty minutes), very well played, and in excellent sound. In the fake aria, Orla Boylan is no match for Kiri Te Kanawa on Charles Gerhardt's sumptuous Herrmann collection, but otherwise there's very little to take issue with here.

While Herrmann fans will be delighted to have an extended chunk of his music from "film noir" Hangover Square (some 18 minutes' worth), it would be idle to pretend that the bits that he did not use to create the Concerto Macabre represent him at his best. The music is mostly dark, lugubrious, muted, and obstinately unmemorable (after the flashy opening), nor do the various brief cues string together all that convincingly for continuous listening. The Concerto, though, is definitely entertaining, and very well performed by Martin Roscoe. It will be fun to see how this series (if it is one) develops.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

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

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Agnus Dei