THE FILM STAR WITH A SOUND TRACK RECORD
Don't Look Back is a series of concerts based on a simple and appealing premise: pop bands give a live rendition of their best-loved album. So why film composer Ennio Morricone and why a show that covers his whole career? Because Morricone is a major figure in pop music, widely admired, imitated and sampled; and because to confine him to just one of his 400-plus film scores would be a dreadful waste.
The two musical institutions Morricone will conduct make a charmingly incongruous match: in the foreground, the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra; behind them, the Crouch End Festival Chorus. Both will go on to acquit themselves impressively. Morricone himself, a tiny, wry, white-haired figure with the benevolent glimmer of a provincial choirmaster, walks unassumingly to the podium wearing what has the look of a rented set of tails. There's nothing grand about him, and nothing about this performance that is not.
Only the more dedicated movie buffs here will have heard all this music before. Arranged into movements - which confuses an audience more accustomed to pop shows; many don't know when to applaud and when not to - it ranges from his hugely popular Western themes to art-house cinema and TV work. It's a hallmark of the best film music that it can convey drama in the absence of the film. Where others are aural set decorators, Morricone is as vital to many of his movies as the screenwriter. In these terms, as well as in cultural impact and instant recognisability, he's matched only by John Barry.
You might expect those Western themes to crown the evening, and familiarity hasn't dulled them one bit. Conjured up live,and rising in sequence to the almighty crescendo of The Ecstasy Of Gold from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, they're more exhilarating and immense than ever. The Western segment is bolstered by the splendid soprano Susanna Rigacci, who sways and postures like a giant, eccentric, sequined stork. But thrilling as that is, the true show-stealer is Scattered Sheets, a breathtaking compendium of less celebrated passages.
This adds up to a remarkable sweep through the popular music of the 20th Century. It contains echoes - and arguably, in some cases, premonitions - of Sicilian folk melodies, Gil Evans, Duke Ellington, Nelson Riddle, Quincy Jones-style pre-Blaxploitation R&B soundtracks and the heavy organ-driven rock of Iron Butterfly.
After being called back by rapturous applause for three encores, poor Morricone appears quite exhausted. He is, after all, 78, and the epic romanticism of his score for The Mission can leave one spent just from listening to it, let alone conducting it. The writing of music for films often amounts to an emotional conjuring trick. Tonight we've seen a genuine magician at work.
