[Closed] Now Playing XLVI

It's hard to imagine not liking this one, unless you have an irrational aversion to South American-y music.

Black Gold is huge fun! Great score, bold theme and so infectious!

Heard it...not for me. Heavily american orchestral music is not my thing either..

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There is of course the great suite as recorded by Charles Gerhardt. (Captain from Castile)

V.

Nice one for the heads up though


NP : THE CLASSIC FILM SCORES OF Alfred Newman



Gerhardt conducts = Stunning!

I was humming a track from For Greater Glory earlier today. I think it's his best score since Avatar.

Black Gold is good too but a bit repetitive. I love the battle music towards the end though.

Love it. Rombi is gold, shame he hasn't developed much more director to composer relationships all these years; he's rather confined to francois ozon..

Seriously, "Danilov's Confession" is almost a direct lift from Shostakovich's 11th.

As I didn't like Cristiada, this is a score where the references do NOT annoy me, even the four-note motif is such a big part of the overall sound of the score that it's uncanny.

There's also the 5th in The Hunter Becomes The Hunted (that bit for harp and flute is a direct lift from a bit from the Largo, and I think I won't exaggerate *much* if I say it's one of my favourite single classical tracks ever!). Horner references the Largo heavily in his career. It has to be pointed out that one of the main recurring motifs in his Jack Ryan scores (Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger) is a combination of that piece with Khachaturian's Adagio (also something Horner seems very partial with since Aliens, though there I can't escape the thought that it was actually a 2001 reference) from the Gayane ballet.

When it comes to Enemy at the Gates I marvel not just as the great setpiece, which is the first track, a tour-de-force in symphonic development to the point of sounding like a part of a symphony than "just a film score", but at something I sometimes took a grudge with Horner at that time of his career. It's coherently and relentlessly bleak. The Russian composers he picked for the score, very smartly, not just add to the bleakness (Shostakovich's "dirty" harmony, the Prokofiev idea of alternating half-tones, in Horner also prevalent in Glory, though not as important for the emotional character of that score as it is here), but also he picked some of the great masters of irony in classical music. The faux-fanfare in Vassili's Fame Spreads (though that one harkens more at Britten, doesn't it? I'm asking because I tried the War Requiem and while appreciating its brilliance it wasn't the right mood for it), the choral outburst there with the Russian cliches perfectly shows that there is something quite wrong there, but showed quite subtly. So the combination of the bleakness beautifully referring to the nonsense of war (and especially a battle as vicious as Stalingrad was in reality, though actually it was much more dirty fight, featuring street-to-street combat rather than mass charges by the Soviets) AND the winter environment. It is indeed the musical epitome of Rattenkrieg, the war of the rats, as Germans called the battle. I don't remember if the movie actually shows how the German soldiers put in a very difficult situation (being, literally, in between two Russian armies) freezing to death in scores, as it was in reality.

Brilliant score that made me a Horner fan after being a hater for a couple of years. After this one I binge-listened to his career and found a new appreciation (same thing happened with me and Brian Tyler, incidentally, though finding my appreciation took longer and a score like Far Cry 3) in him, though it took me many more years to actually find something to like in Titanic outside of the action music.

EDIT: I had to make it clear that I'm aware that the ballet was called Gayane and not composed by Gayane

There's also the SCHINDLER'S LIST ordeal in that score, but I don't care, really. A lot of is blown out of proportion. Horner is pretty friggin' fantastic anyway!

A little bit of a mix for today's playlist:
- The Sum of All Fears - Jerry Goldsmith
I'm getting warmer to this one with each listen

- The Stepford Wives - David Arnold
It's like the Elfman theme in a non-Elfman score

- Hoosiers - Jerry Goldsmith
One of the best sports score there is

NP : THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD - Alfred Newman



More sublimeness!

Everybody stole from Bach and Beethoven, Friggin thieves.

NP : THE WIND AND THE LION - Jerry Goldsmith



Brilliant!