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"Great British Film Music"
National Philharmonic Orchestra
Bernard Herrmann, conductor
(London)
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there are two topics in music about which I have little trouble restraining my enthusiasm. One of them is soundtracks. The other is the music of England, which has done as much for that nation culturally as has its cuisine. English music and food are similarly sparing in flavor and color; and both have fundamentally to do with cows meandering about the countryside. Benjamin Britten's music is a possible exception, but I always have suspected that he was abducted as a small child from some other more exotic nation, perhaps the United States. As for Handel, who lived and died entirely for pleasure in London and became a British subject, the blood flowing through his veins was incontestably German, forever a bitter pill for British music apologists to swallow. Soundtrack apologists have even fewer excuses than the British for their musical proclivities. But they do have Bernard Herrmann, whose soundtracks, particularly for the films of Alfred Hitchcock, are often as exciting and masterful as the movies they accompany. Herrmann is currently enjoying a revival, with major symphony orchestras programming and recording his film scores. It is this revival we have to thank for London's new offering, "Great British Film Music," a reissue of a 1975 LP that features Herrmann conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra in soundtrack excerpts by William Walton, Constant Lambert, Arnold Bax, Arthur Benjamin, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Arthur Bliss. What makes Herrmann's soundtracks exceptional, and what enables modern music directors to program them in the concert hall, is that they are capable of transcending the cinema. The same can rarely be said for the music on this disc. The famously lyrical Walton sounds earthbound in his music for "Richard III" and "Escape Me Never," burdened to represent regal pomp in the first and a character/composer's music in the second. The music may work beautifully with the films, but it doesn't bear more than one or two hearings at home. Parts of the "Things to Come" suite by Arthur Bliss are stirring, but the timing is always bringing you up short. Does the music stop, one wonders, because the composer has said what he set out to say, or because the credits finished rolling? Classical music record label executives — desperate characters, to be sure — have decided that movie soundtracks are going to resuscitate their dying industry. Certainly one could do worse than even the below-average music of Walton and Vaughn Williams, but one could also do a lot better. Handel, for instance, or Britten, maybe even Beethoven. If all else fails, you could go to the movies. — Paul Festa Paul Festa is a regular contributor to Salon. All titles may not be immediately available.
Monday Dec. 23: Minnesota Orchestra, Eiji Oue conductor "Exotic Dances from the Opera," "Stravinsky" |