{"id":3700,"date":"2011-10-25T10:37:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T14:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3700"},"modified":"2011-10-25T10:37:07","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T14:37:07","slug":"2cds-music-of-james-horner-the-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3700","title":{"rendered":"2CDs: Music of James Horner, The (2011)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>M<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Rating: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0Silva Screen<\/a> \/ Released: October 3, 2011<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: \u00a0CD1: 14 tracks \/ (75:08) + CD2: 13 tracks \/ (72:35)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by Michael Beek..<\/p>\n

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Composer: James Horner<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

With a 30+ year career under his belt, James Horner has a substantive canon of music worthy of a retrospective, and Silva\u2019s 2-disc offering presents current and past favourites performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.<\/p>\n

Of the two discs, CD1 is the most satisfying due to the breadth of Horner\u2019s skills as a writer of large-scale orchestral scores. The lengthy Avatar<\/strong> suite easily demonstrates his skill with chorus, large brass, and beautifully integrated strings which blend the classical scoring style and modernism that permeates Horner\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n

Although he\u2019s held back from scoring volumes of standard genre films after the monster hit Titanic<\/strong> (which, like the film, hasn\u2019t aged as well, given both are steeped in melodrama and centered around a grating main theme), he\u2019s picked and chosen a few interesting small films, notably The Boy in the Striped Pajamas <\/strong>(with its flowing piano sections); the thematic simplicity of The Karate Kid<\/strong> remake; and wavering melodic undercurrent in A Beautiful Mind<\/strong>, conveyed by female voice, trumpets, and a pulsing piano figure.<\/p>\n

Most of the selections on CD1 cover historical pieces written for Deep Message Pictures, and fans will enjoy the seamless flow from the aforementioned to the Latin-tinged The Mask of Zorro<\/strong>, the strident aggression of Ransom<\/strong>, the elegance of rustic Scotland in Braveheart<\/strong>, and sprawling Americana in Legends of the Fall<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

CD2 is a blend of Horner\u2019s family-friendly films, of which the best are The Rocketeer <\/strong>and Cocoon<\/strong>. Less notable works are We\u2019re Back! A Dinosaur\u2019s Story<\/strong> and the drippy Land Before Time<\/strong>, and Willow<\/strong>, which still sounds like an overwrought attempt to turn a weighted Wagnerian score into something magical and fanciful.<\/p>\n

The first two Star Trek<\/strong> sequels get their own theme statements, as does Aliens<\/strong> \u2013 still a tough score for anyone to re-record and match in energy and nuances, outside of Horner\u2019s perfect original recording \u2013 and Battle Beyond the Stars<\/strong>, the low-budget Star Wars<\/strong> knock-off Roger Corman commissioned, and Horner managed to gloss over with big sounds that presaged his Standard Heroic Brass Fanfare for a Sci-Fi, as done with sharper refinement in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Critics of Horner will probably find flaws in many of his scores, and to some extent they aren\u2019t far off in citing the composer for his self-plagiarism (the main harmonic line in Beautiful Mind<\/strong> and The Man Without a Face<\/strong> are identical<\/em>). Silva\u2019s producers have picked a good selection of material that isn\u2019t as overtly derivative of prior works, but it is odd to hear bits of David Arnold\u2019s Stargate<\/strong> theme popping up in Troy<\/strong> (oh, it\u2019s there), nor integration of overused classical pieces: Gayane\u2019s \u201cBallet Suite\u201d worked great in Aliens<\/strong>, but it didn\u2019t need to reappear in Patriot Games<\/strong>; and he broke the 100-year global ban on using Orff\u2019s Carmina Burana<\/strong> in film music until 2040 when the piece dominated Glory<\/strong> in a blatantly reworked soundalike version with mixed chorus.<\/p>\n

Horner\u2019s canon comes with baggage and controversy (as well as specific irritants), but he is responsible for some of the most important scores of the last 25 years. Pity this set didn\u2019t include material from Brainstorm<\/strong>, Wolfen<\/strong>, or Something Wicked This Way Comes<\/strong>, but perhaps Silva might consider a Vol. 2, contrasting his modernism with the quiet, intimate themes for which he\u2019s equally adept.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0M<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews \/ M . Rating: Very Good Label:\u00a0Silva Screen \/ Released: October 3, 2011 Tracks & Album Length: \u00a0CD1: 14 tracks \/ (75:08) + CD2: 13 tracks \/ (72:35) . Special Notes: 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by Michael Beek.. . Composer: James Horner . . Review: With a 30+ year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[327],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-XG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3700"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3700"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3703,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3700\/revisions\/3703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}