Despite having scored more than 400 movies, Ennio Morricone has visited Britain only three times to perform his compositions. Ever the perfectionist, he postponed this concert, scheduled for July, when he felt the orchestra were not sufficiently au fait with elements of the idiosyncratic programme. Morricone has been given licence to roam freely throughout his back catalogue, cherry-picking from his extraordinary oeuvre.
Once again Morricone is conducting the Roma Sinfonietta and the 80-voice (sic) choir of the Crouch End Festival Chorus. The reverence with which this musical maverick is regarded is reflected in a standing ovation before the composer - 78, but looking a decade younger - even reaches the podium.
Besides his soundtrack alchemy, Morricone has had a parallel career as a composer of contemporary chamber music, and tonight's programme is divided into six thematic suites. He opens with the rarely performed Novecento, a set of three ensemble pieces marked by atonal interventions and gorgeous symphonic strings.
The evening's highlight, inevitably, is the stirring sequence of lavish scores to Sergio Leone's 1960s spaghetti westerns. The exhilarating coyote-howl theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is magnificent: macho and moody, yet alive with febrile grace. Then soprano Susanna Rigacci, a long-time Morricone cohort, is tremendous on Giu la Testa from A Fistful of Dollars, her vibrato enhancing the number's vivacious melodrama.
Morricone closes with the stately, Mahler-like grandeur of Gabriel's Oboe and In Earth As in Heaven from the 1986 soundtrack to The Mission, then is cheered back to perform three encores. It's a fittingly tumultuous end to an evening in the company of a maestro whose music may be instrumental but is never incidental.
