BEGINNING IN FEBRUARY 2022--CINEMUSICAL WILL BE MOVING TO MY PRIMARY WEBSITE.  New reviews will be posted there.  CINEMUSICAL

Cinemusical is hosted by composer, educator, and music critic Steven A. Kennedy.  Steve's reviews appear in Film Score Monthly Online Magazine and at Film Music Review.  Steve is a member of BMI, the International Film Music Critics Association, the American Composer's Forum, and the Dramatist's Guild of America.  For information on his music, or to inquire about commissioning a work, visit his website. He has written five musicals: The Jurgens File (a contemporary work based on a true story that took place in MN in the 1950s-1980s); The Magnificent Ambersons (based on the Booth Tarkington Pulitzer Prize-winning novel) with audio excerpts available at the site; Tinsel in the Toilet (a holiday drama); Chantecler (a new translation of Rostand's play); and Mark the Halls (a parody of Hallmark Christmas Movies).

The Marian Sonata for Violin and Piano featured on the release In Tandem available for order.

The physical CD, Reflections, can be purchased exclusively from HealingBaskets.com.   You can download  the album on Amazon, iTunes, or my website.  It is also available on Spotify and Pandora.  During the pandemic, Improvs for Hope  is available at www.sakennedymusic.com.  Also now available is Off 2 Broadway which features piano renditions of music from Steve's musicals.  All albums are available on Amazon, Spotify, and iTunes.  

The blog features reviews of releases of film, video game, and classical music.  There is a blend of contemporary and classic film scores that will appear here.  Classical reviews focus primarily on 20th Century music as well as American music, however, occasional forays into previous periods appear as well to offer some variety.

Most of the reviews here will be of releases available in physical CD format.  Reviews will be more infrequent (2020 and moving forward) due to less physical product availability and my own personal focus on composing.  Reach out if you wish to have your releases reviewed here.

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Mozart Piano Concertos, vol. 4: Nos. 20 & 25
Anne-Marie McDermott, piano.
Odense Symphony Orchestra/Sebastian Lang-Lessing
Bridge 9562
Total Time:  66:22
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

For her latest volume of this Mozart piano concerto survey, Anne-Marie McDermott turns her attention to two of the more significant works in this genre.  K. 466 has its own interest due to its minor mode setting which is always interesting in Mozart’s hands.  The 25^th Concerto (K. 503) is considered the last of the 12 great concertos by the composer.  Returning here from vol. 4 are the same forces and conductor.  These are works that are moving us closest to the Romantic style and one can hear this unfolding well in the music and in this performance (K. 466 even uses Beethoven’s cadenzas).

The opening sonata-allegro movement is among the most symphonic of the concertos and one of the longer essays in this genre for Mozart.  It was composed in December of 1786 and the interesting orchestral details are just one of the many delights of K. 503.  One thing it is most notable for is its more idiomatic wind writing.  The Odense wind players are brought forward a bit in the sound picture sometimes for these smaller solo moments but are overall well-balanced against the strings and piano nicely.  Another of the delights is Mozart’s second thematic idea which winks a bit at the listening with its melodic line and rhythms seeming to echo La Marseillese.  The subsequent two movements balance the concerto’s opening with first an exquisite “Andante.”  Mozart chooses to play with expectations as well here with a sonata-allegro form that somehow forgets it needs a development section.  It is in this movement even more so that the hints of wind writing are more wonderful to behold.  Finally, we are treated to a mostly-joyful sonata-rondo that even includes a quote from Mozart’s own Idomeneo.  This masterful work is Mozart’s most captivating and great achievements in this genre and McDermott finds an excellent balance between the wit and deep emotional depths of this music.  Quite exquisite playing has a real sublime quality and the phrasing here with the orchestral interplay is equally paralleled as the ideas are shifted between different sections and the soloist.  Also quite excellent are the attention to accents and other smaller details in the string writing that help provide even further enjoyment to this performance.  In the 25^th concerto, there is both that sense that we are at the height of Classicism, but with one foot beginning to nudge us ever onward into a new aesthetic era.  This performance managed to bring this out quite well.

Written the year before (!), the Piano Concerto in d, K. 466 is one of those very few concert works of Mozart’s in a minor key.  However, there are plenty of experimental approaches to form coupled with some of the composer’s most beautiful melodic writing to make this work a favorite concerto.  Among the works many admirers was a young Beethoven who performed it often and wrote his own cadenzas for it.  Many other pianist-composers throughout the 19^th Century would also do the same.  Things are a bit darker as the work opens with a syncopated rhythm one finds in the minor-mode symphonies.  The opening theme will be further developed by the piano and a major-mode secondary theme tries to insert some joy but it dissipates, as does the movement itself.  That quality will also close out the surprising rondo form of the central “Romance” which is appropriately filled with some of the most romantic melodies.  The closing “Rondo” has a restless quality that includes little Mannheim Rockets (a nod to earlier style) but is most notable for its excellent technical writing for the soloist and a strange set of modulations.  Again the wind writing here is also begin to show a bit more attention to idiomatic qualities infused from Mozart’s operatic style.  That helps make the music even more dramatic than just the interesting ideas of form and melodic material.

As noted in my review of volume 4, if one wants to really get a sense of Mozart’s development as an orchestrator, his piano concertos are often excellent ways to peer into his exploration and experimentation with the developing orchestra.  In K. 503 we get an excellent taste of the opera orchestra firmly planted as a symphonic body highlighting the new colors at one’s disposal.  The Odense Symphony provides a superb backdrop for McDermott’s interpretation and her conceptions of this music are equally met by the orchestra.  The K. 466 pulls that back just a tad to keep us in the Classical Era but those accents are a real harbinger of what is to come and the orchestra handles those moments quite well.  Dynamic shading here is quite important and that makes this performance an even stronger one.  McDermott’s entry in the opening movement is quite heartbreaking with out overdoing the pathos. There is one slight increase in tempo after the opening orchestral statement which pushes things forward a bit more before pulling back just slightly.  It works for the interpretation here quite well.

Most likely listeners will have their own favorite recordings of these concerti.  Mozarteans can be quite picky about how these works sound but this cycle is continuously proving that it can compete confidently with what other versions exist.  The performance of K. 466 has a warmer, more ambient quality than K. 503 but both are provide a solid imaging and sonic detail that further supports the performance.  Highly recommended.

Legends and Light, Vol. 2
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/David Watkins;
Lorne MacDougall, Bagpipes; Ryan Murphy, Uilleann Pipes;
Brno Philharmonic Orchestra/Pavel Snajdr
Navona Records 6399
Total Time:  75:08
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Legends and Light is a second volume of new orchestral music in a series whose first volume appeared in 2018.  Navona has upped the game a bit with a move to using the Royal Scottish National Orchestra from the earlier more regional European orchestras.  Performances by that orchestra are featured in the opening four works on this release with the equally adept Brno Philharmonic rounding things off with three final pieces.  The recordings come from March and April of last year.  The album opens with a decidedly Celtic feel and then moves us into more ethereal realms.

Helen Mackinnon’s The Rinns of Islay takes us on an episodic journey across five short snapshots of Islay.  Opening with a sense of mystery as the sun rises, the piece than moves into a rain shower, a bit of a jig, and some additional colorful landscape expressions before tapering off.  All of this us cast in a filmic modern style that includes some fine solo writing across the orchestra.  Nan Avanti moves us into a more ethnic-specific musical language enhanced by the use of bagpipes and Uillean Pipes for her romantically-tinged Tributum.  The folkish quality of the music makes it a more traditional orchestral tone poem with gorgeous melodic writing and rich string sound (it has that Braveheart/Far and Away quality).  Richard E. Brown’s Voices of the Night takes its inspiration from a Longfellow poem and moves us into a nocturnal fantasy of evening sounds, dancing shadows in the darkness, and the appearance of dawning light in this fascinating piece.  Lost Voices is a reflection of those whose lives have been tragically cut short by violence with a musical exploration to underscore the different traumatic stages as well of those left behind in Deborah Kavasch’s work.  There are some quite touching moments in this work where we move from dissonance into a richer, consonant glimmer of hope with subtle shades of wind color to help against shimmering strings.  The RSNO recordings are all fine, with a sometimes tentative feel to the performances which can feel a bit clinical in spots.

The Brno Philharmonic is featured in three briefer pieces to close off this ample release of new orchestral music.  First up is Manannan-Legend of the Sea by Anthony Wilson.  The eleven-minute work moves through different scenes depicting the gentleness as well as the power of the ocean with the added attraction here of a mythical Irish character cast in a Neo-Romantic style.  From mythology we move onto to nuclear physics with a musical depiction of the revolving chaos of atomic nuclei in Ben Marino’s Yrast 2.0.  Small motivic ideas swirl about with slow builds in this evocative music.  The album concludes with Kim Diehnelt’s Striadica: A Symphonic Passage with a more abstract programmatic quality that connects somewhat to the approach of the piece that precedes it.

These orchestral works provide a glimpse into new voices writing for these forces.  The pieces are all well-constructed and the program here moves well from the inviting into some of the more dissonant and abstract works which is a common approach on Navona’s releases.  Some pieces seem to work better than others which is of course a subjective reality for one’s first experience of new music.  In short, it allows a little bit of something for anyone interested in contemporary orchestral music.