Scoring In Reel Time
A fistful of notes from Ennio Morricone impresses Clive Davis
Anyone who doubts that film music has come of age as a performing art in
its own right need only look around: the audience is everywhere.
Hollywood veteran Lalo Schifrin has just given us a new recording of his
jazz soundtrack for Bullitt. Next Saturday sees a Festival Hall
screening of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, the orchestral score
reconstructed by Timothy Brook.
Ennio Morricone's long-awaited London concert debut, at the Barbican,
belonged in a class of its own. In an ideal world, I suppose, many of
the Italian composer's legion of fans would have preferred to hear the
music in conjunction with screen images to savour the visual
counterpoint. But the real point of this instalment of the venue's
multi-disciplinary Only Connect series was to demonstrate that Morricone
is a figure who is bigger than the pictures. His music should be judged
on its own terms.
Given that goal, the first half of the evening, devoted to the original
compositions Fragment of Eros and Shadow of a Far Away Presence, was
only partially successful. When he is not adding to his extraordinarily
prolific film credits (even he seems to have lost count around the 400
mark) the conservatory-trained Morricone pursues a secondary career as a
creator of more conventional concert pieces.
Conventional being the key word here. The patient uncoiling of chords on
Fragment testified to his craftsmanship, and Susanna Rigacci's soprano
supplied echoes of the distinctive blend of voice and orchestra in the
film pieces. Shades of Berio too. Yet by suppressing his instinctive
gift for melody and rhythm, Morricone sacrificed the most potent weapons
in his arsenal.
The audience duly applauded, yet it was in the second half, with the
Rome Symphony Orchestra augmented by the Crouch End Festival Chorus and
Folk Choir that the proceedings took wing. Although he has long broken
free of the "spaghetti western" label, Morricone was never going to be
able to leave the podium without an excursion into The Good, the Bad and
the Ugly.
This was anything but an evening of Greatest Hits nevertheless. Loosely
structured into three suites, the performances wove extracts from Sacco
and Vanzetti, Queimada!, a brief extract from The Battle of Algiers and
other lesser-known titles. Leone, understandably, had a segment to
himself, woven around the haunting themes from Once Upon a Time in the
West.
Even when memories of the films themselves had faded, Morricone's skill
in fusing so many diverse timbral elements along with the vocals
remained little short of miraculous. His writing for strings can be as
terse as Bernard Herrmann's or as lush as John Barry's, while his
incorporation of vibraphone, guitar and jazz drum figures never smacks
of gimmickry.
The majestic chorus from The Mission provided an epic finale. Dapper and
impassive, Morricone returned with a slightly ragged series of encores.
The clock ticked on. Still, he had earned the right to indulge himself.
