CD Review
Piercing the Celluloid Veil: An Orchestral Odyssey ***1/2
MARK WOLFRAM
Wrightwood WRCD-1562
19 tracks - 50:31
"Piercing the Celluloid Veil" is intended to be a stand-alone
concert album of music that sounds like film music...but isn't. Many of
the tracks are indeed like underscore (more so than concert pieces or even
main titles) and this makes for a strange, almost demo-like compilation.
In a normal compilation album, the listener is already familiar with many
of the pieces -- with this album, this association is almost impossible,
so a consistency from track to track has to be drawn from elsewhere. In
the case of Mark Wolfram's album, there's enough of a decided compositional
style to hold most of it together.
The title of the album, "Piercing the Celluloid Veil," is
a seven-minute tone poem (track 14) based on the oil painting on the cover
of the album -- but, most of the tracks here are short, demo-like underscore
cues. These individual cuts have few memorable melodies, motives or themes,
but the orchestration is clean and the writing is clearly above average.
Certain tracks ("Wondrous Journey") are heavily generic and others
("Slasher") are simply awful, but there are also pieces like
"Dogged Pursuit," which mixes fandango-like Bernard Herrmann
elements with an exciting Jerry Goldsmith-styled action track. There are
many other tracks that fondly recall film styles while staying within the
realms of Wolfram's voice. "Wistful Disappointment" has a lush
'80s Peter Knight orchestration and feel to it, while "Ethical Dilemma"
has effective Howard Shore-like atonal building. "Farewell" crosses
Elmer Bernstein with Lee Holdridge, and even a bit of Mancini. "The
Test of Time," on the other hand, is a pop-laden work that doesn't
really fit in with the grand scheme of things -- further pushing the issue
of how this is more of a demo than a simple concert album (not that it
cannot or should not be a demo, but with this piece, it's like: "Hey
I can do pop too!" Another unfortunate demo indicator: The second
half of the album is considerably weaker than the first. Most of the music
performed by the Sinfonia of London (the first nine tracks plus a couple
of others) is well played and recorded, and very listenable...even enjoyable.
After that, there isn't much left over. The last track on the album (which
should close it with a bang) is the 11:34, synth-ridden "Corridors."
There must have been some debate over whether or not anyone would listen
this far in to the disc -- it would even have been better (if not ideal)
to end with the brass trio (even though it's more demo stuff: "This
is my actual concert writing, and chamber no less!"). Fortunately,
even when the music gets weaker, it's mostly acoustic performances, except
for the aforementioned final cut.
It would be wonderful if this moment-to-moment/dramatic style of writing
(often employed solely in film music) could consistently succeed as albums
like the one attempted here. Tone poems like "Piercing the Celluloid
Veil" and action tracks like "Dogged Pursuit" do not need
a film to provide their structure. Many annoying people say that film music
is incomplete without the film -- "incomplete" is a poor choice
of terminology. If it's a musically coherent piece then it is perfectly
"complete." It is merely out of context. More important, if this
music is written with the intention of underscoring some imaginary scene,
there's even less "incompleteness" about it. Your imagination
provides the structure that the film would otherwise. "Piercing the
Celluloid Veil" is a decent album but a better concept. Even if this
specific attempt shapes up more like a demo (the generic, demo-like track
titles leave worlds to be desired), soundtrack fans should try and support
this kind of music. It really does sound like movie music. Go and prove
that you're not just collecting film music albums (like stamps or baseball
cards) just because of the movies or famed composers they're associated
with.
-- Jonathan Z. Kaplan
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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