CD Reviews At the Movies, Murder on the Orient Express, Studs Lonigan

At the Movies ***

ENNIO MORRICONE

RCA/BMG Heritage 07863 65133 2

18 tracks - 53:02

In Spaghetti Westerns, an encyclopedic survey of the cowboy movies produced by Italian filmmakers in the late '60s, Sir Christopher Frayling attributes the genre's unique musical sound to Ennio Morricone, praising him for being the first composer to blend orchestral instruments with electric guitars, winnowing voices, castanets and bullwhips. Professor Frayling, however, dismisses the maestro's subsequent work, concluding that "his non-Western scores are not always so successful -- or interesting."

This new anthology album (which collects themes from films as various as the western A Gun for Ringo, the thriller What Have You Done to Solange? and the love story Per Amore) calls this claim into question. That is, many pieces included here demonstrate that the composer's singular (and emotive) sound -- the result of simple, often kitschy melodies set against baroque harmonies -- has surfaced regularly throughout his long career, regardless of genre.

Unfortunately, over half of the tracks on At the Movies have appeared elsewhere with frustrating consistency. A large portion of space, for instance, is given to music pulled from the horse operas Sergio Leone directed (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and Once Upon a Time in the West). This is a tactic RCA also used in its 1990 collection, Legendary Italian Westerns.

Nevertheless, it's arguable that the CD's lesser-known pieces compensate for their scarcity with quality. The Adventurer, a string-driven adagio used in a Terence Young nautical adventure, for example, gently rises and falls like the waves it describes. "The Encounter," from The Master and Margarita, balances a cascading violin arrangement against a twangy banjo, to create a grotesque and somber context for Edda Dell'Orso's soaring voice. And Secret of the Sahara, from a 1987 film of the same name, blends synths and strings to approximate the quiet, stretching patterns of the African desert.

Any one of these compositions should prove that Morricone did not peak creatively more than 30 years ago. This idea (entertained by many, perhaps) is like the Wild West itself: just a dusty old myth.  -- Stephen Armstrong
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Murder on the Orient Express *** 1/2

RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT

DRG DRG CD 19039

10 tracks - 39:36

In 1974, two years before Agatha Christie's death, one of her best known novels, Murder on the Orient Express, was adapted by Sydney Lumet for the screen. Featuring an all-star cast with Albert Finney as the great sleuth Hercule Poirot, the film enjoyed good reviews, high ticket sales and several Academy Award nominations, including one in the Best Original Dramatic Score category. (That year's award, by the way, went to Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola for The Godfather Part II, which wouldn't have been nominated by today's Academy.)

Despite this honor, however, British composer Richard Rodney Bennett's score was never released in the U.S. until this year, and now, fortunately, listeners can enjoy this music without having to watch and listen to the affected mannerisms of the film's cast at the same time. Moreover, DRG presents this remastered score with liner notes, written by Bennett, that explain the history of its composition as well as the composer's aesthetic intentions.

The album opens with "Overture and Kidnapping," a two-part piece that begins as a bouncy waltz and halfway through turns into a funereal, classical arrangement. Regularly throughout the score, in fact, Bennett shifts gears abruptly like this, as he directs his emphasis from the lighter aspects of Christie's mystery to the darker ones. Occasionally, as well, he blends these contrasting styles together to produce a sound that is simultaneously sweet and sinister, as he does in one of the score's longer pieces, "The Orient Express."

And though the waltz motif tends to dominate this collection, other melodies surface. On tracks like "Entr'acte" and "Finale," for instance, the main title theme -- a simple series of ascending notes -- materializes, coupled with a somber string-and-winds backdrop. And in "Princess Dragomiroff," one of the few cues collected here, Bennett strikes the title theme's brittle notes for a moment and then introduces a rising and falling pattern of lush strings that evoke Ravel with their emotive simplicity.

Having arranged the album's selections in a manner that breaks from the order in which they appear in the film, DRG imbues this score with a new momentum, making it resemble an uninterrupted, although disappointingly short, symphony. Superior to both the movie and the novel, this re-released opus reminds us that British composers (an often overlooked group) write fine film music, too.  -- Stephen Armstrong
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Studs Lonigan *** 1/2

JERRY GOLDSMITH

Varèse Sarabande VCL 1102 1016

14 tracks - 34:40

Studs Lonigan, while a fine score in its own right, will be of interest to most soundtrack enthusiasts as an early collaboration between Goldsmith and John Williams. Johnny is the piano soloist, and he's fantastic on several terrific solos. But now on to the merits of the CD as a whole...

This newest Goldsmith CD in the Varèse Sarabande Soundtrack club series opens with a "Main Title" similar to Chinatown, with an old Hollywood-style string arrangement accompanying a mournful and bluesy trumpet solo. Overall, however, the score is primarily in the same Americana category as The Flim-Flam Man and The Traveling Executioner. At the least, it represents the same time period in American history, with generally an exciting and upbeat feel. It's also similar to Williams' The Reivers, with a fair amount of honky-tonk and ragtime piano, blues harmonica and other distinctly American styles. Still, Studs is not as reflective and nostalgic in tone as The Reivers; it's a lot grittier.

The standout track is the six-minute "A Game of Pool." Though I haven't seen the film, I can easily imagine a smoke-filled billiard room and the creatures that inhabit it, not to mention the back and forth quick rhythm of the game. "No Hate" is also a fine cue, featuring a romantic treatment of the main theme.

Not a throwaway score at all, this is a fine effort from early in Goldsmith's career, though at $20 a pop, one would hope for a longer disc with perhaps an additional short score complimenting this one.  -- Darren MacDonald
 
 

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