CD: Dangerous Method, A (2011)

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Rating: Very Good

Label: Sony Classical/ Released: November 21, 2011

Tracks & Album Length: 19 tracks / (65:05)

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Special Notes: 10-page colour booklet.

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Composer: Howard Shore

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Review:

In Howard Shore’s latest distinguished collaboration with David Cronenberg, the composer manages to capture the emotionally restrictive tone of Freud’s turn-of-the-century era, and convey character vulnerabilities through a simple yet pliable theme.

More of a fragmented hook than actual theme, Shore’s tonal stepping-stone works as a gloomy orchestral introduction to the film, and in a slightly menacing guise it captures the unease as characters start to drift into dangerous emotional terrain when patient and doctor relationships becomes a bit improper.

Woven into the score are initial quotes of “Siegfried’s Idyll” and the Funeral music by Wagner, and the album closes with a lengthy arrangement of Wagner’s Idyll, as arranged by Shore and performed with elegance and precision by Lang Lang. The fusion of Shore and Wagner works surprisingly well throughout the score because Shore’s arrangements and instrumentation also bridge the composer’s thematic material with a specific sonic design of quiet, mounting gloom (er, ‘Wagner lite’), as evoked by slowly rendered harmonics, and lovely intimate segments performed by piano and chamber strings, with slight support from select woodwinds.

“Only One God” – one of the rare long cues in Shore’s generally brief score – is more characteristic of the composer’s slow-building cues and thick string textures, and even though the Dangerous CD is essentially a suite of short, dramatically strategic cuts, it’s an affecting work. It’s also oddly pleasing to hear Shore aiming for period evocation instead of surreal experimentation; his closing cue, “Reflection,” reassembles all the nuances of his singular theme into a sweeping 5 minute piece, and the arrangement also functions as a bridge to the Idyll arrangement, which fills out the album’s final 32 minutes.

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© 2012 Mark R. Hasan

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External References:

IMDB — Soundtrack Album — Composer Filmography

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