Classical Music for the Film Music Fan

franz_conrad wrote
Elaborating on a few of my choices above. I was trying to pick very recent stuff that would only have come out in the last three years or so.

- Dharma at Big Sur (electric violin concerto) / My Father Knew Charles Ives (John Adams)
This was a double album that came out 2 years ago. Dharma at Big Sur is a musical portrait of sorts of a Californian Buddhist community (Adams is based in California), and the electric violin soli suit the serenity one would expect from that subject. For me the real treasure here is the three movement My Father Knew Charles Ives. Charles Ives was an early 20th century American composer based in New England, and his music often interpolated the melodies of others in a dense polyphonic texture where the sources became bent beyond recognition (but not always). The most famous work of his, which has been used in many films, is the solemn tone poem 'The Unanswered Question' - where musical ideas float over the listener in something a bit more like a collage than a conventional composition. Now Adams' father didn't actually know Charles Ives, but they would have walked the same streets of New England, and had similar temperaments. The Adams composition attempts a collage composition in the spirit of Ives, but charged with the composer's own minimalist energy. You'll appreciate it more if you know a bit of Ives' work.

- New Impossibilities (Silk Road Ensemble - Yo Yo Ma et al)
This is the third Silk Road album from Yo Yo Ma's ensemble, and I reckon it equals the first, featuring fewer compositions of longer length than the more fragmented second album (which was of course excellent in its own way). The highlight for me is the ensemble's reworking of Osvaldo Golijov's 'Night of the Flying Horses' for far earthier tone colours that anyone would have heard it before. There are other pleasures however - 'Arabian Waltz' is spirited and energetic; 'Song of the Eight Unruly Poets' could be an action cue with its syncopated percussion and brass; 'The Silent City' has a great pulsating string rhythm; and this album's performance of the lengthy 'Ambush from Ten sides' is definitely another highpoint. You have to like 'world music', or music constructed from authentic period instruments to really enjoy this stuff. (There's no soft string backing here.) Lots of energy.
Samples should be available from the three albums here: http://www.silkroadproject.org/music/re … ities.html

- Symphony 2 for string orchestra / Suite from the Red Violin (John Corigliano)
I reviewed this album when it came out:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/f … suite.html
The five points of the symphony are a great journey. In 'Scherzo', you're racing somewhere with incredible speed, flying in the face of all danger. 'Nocturne' is a serene night in Morocco, the string voices approximating the blending of mullah voices calling all to prayer. 'Fugue' is an unusual asymmetrically-structured fugue where all serenity unravels. 'Postlude' reveals where we really were all along - a man dying of AIDS in the back of an ambulance, his life flashing before his eyes. This piece just wrecks me. It was a string quartet by Corigliano that he later expanded for full string orchestra (moments of it still feature a quartet at the centre), and he won the Pulitzer for it. It's not an easy listen at times - Corigliano is one of the key post-romantic composers of our time, mixing avante-garde harshness with the emotional intensity of late Romantic composition. As with his pupil Goldenthal, there are some very harsh edges.
The suite from the Red Violin probably doesn't need to be talked up - if you like that score, you'll already know if you want more of it. I think this suite works a bit better than the full concerto.

- Oceana / Tenebrae / Three Songs (Osvaldo Golijov)
I started to look into Golijov when I heard he was going to be scoring Coppola's Youth without Youth. (Note: he's also doing Tetro, Coppola's next film.) This was the album I started with, and it contains three works. Tenebrae is the highlight for me, a serenely beautiful two-movement work for string quartet. The Three Songs, which feature Dawn Upshaw, are also superb - containing much more than mere songs. The songs feature fine orchestrations and some great non-vocal moments as well - the highlight being the incredible 'Night of the Flying Horses', goes from a lullaby to a memorable two minute allegro finale. 'How Slow the Wind' is a reworking of a cello piece he wrote called 'Mariel', and its a haunting piece either way. 'Oceana' - the main work of the album - is one that I haven't quite warmed to, probably due to my lack of enthusiasm for classical choral music. It's growing on me with its multiple choirs, soloists, and Latin rhythms, but I would recommend this album for the other two works, which make it more than worth it.

More on the others later.