October 29, 2010

  • Review: Doctor Who Series 4-The Specials (Gold)

    Doctor Who—Series 5 will be making its way to DVD/Blueray soon and fans of the long-running BBC series know that it features a new incarnation of the good doctor after the reboot several years ago.  Fortunately for fans, Murray Gold’s music for the first four series have been featured on individual discs to allow for a general musical overview of the scores for the different seasons.  Now, Silva has released a two-disc set of music from Series 4 encompassing “The Specials.”  The presentation here is somewhat similar to the previous four releases (in terms of booklet notes and design) but this time more music is featured from individual episodes.

     

    Disc One features music from three separate episodes:  “The Next Doctor,” “Planet of the Dead,” and “The Waters of Mars.”  The disc opens with “Vale,” a somewhat somber choral work that serves as a bookend of the scores presented here (it recurs as the penultimate track on disc two) and comes from “The Waters of Mars.”  The music in “The Next Doctor”  (represented by 11 tracks) is perhaps even more cinematic than that which we’ve heard before in this series.  There are some stylistic borrowings here from Prokofiev (”Not the Doctor”) to Barry, whose rich orchestral Bond sound appears in action cues especially.  But the reality is that so much of the score continues to illustrate how amazing Gold’s style is here.  There are flourishes of impressionistic style, grandiose brass pronouncements, moments that could have come from a huge space odyssey, comical punctuations in the music that hint at Mickey-Mousing, and touching lyric writing (culminating in “Goodbyes”) all done through engaging thematic development and rich orchestration.  The score for “The Next Doctor” manages to hint at its Christmas-time setting through orchestration that eschews carol as it opens and concludes.  “Planet of the Dead” continues its big orchestral style, with some electronics and delicious forays into jazz (“The Cat Burglar) big band styles.  There are some intriguing bassoon lines that come to the foreground several times in the 6 selections from this score.  The final score selection, “Lithuania,” has an almost Doyle-like melodic contour in its brassy finish.  “The Waters of Mars” (represented by four selection) section opens with a beautifully delicate piece for strings and guitar, “Letter to Earth” that shifts to some gorgeously dark flute writing and shifts through several other musical ideas rather quickly.  The electronic ideas here are not overwhelming to the orchestral texture often adding a little edge rhythmically, or added mystery to the overall sound.  The simplicity of some of the textures in the more lyric sections are striking after the big orchestral moments.

     

    Disc Two features the score from the final series four episode, “The End of Time.”  Again, this fuller presentation of material will be a fine apotheosis musically and emotionally for the drama as the fate of the current Doctor Who becomes inevitably clear.  The engaging music continues throughout this score as well.  Delightful music for Wilf lightens the score considerably making it feel more like a light-romantic comedy at times.  The humorous music is brilliantly orchestrated and truly among the highlights of this collection.  These moments play alongside some deeply emotional music as well, the first of these dramatically moving times occurs in “The End Draws Near” even though the shades of humorous music seem to be oblivious to reality.  The action music, with its Barry/Arnold Bond brass (that never shifts into screaming high ends) works very well to increase the excitement and moments of jazzy rhythmic syncopations also are nice touches to the music.  Again, Gold’s thematic connections are sprinkled enough through the material to help make the whole listening experience one that is constantly engaging.  By moving from action, to humor, to more emotionally lyric music over the course of this full presentation, one never tires of the abundance of material.  One of the great highlights is the ever soaring music in ”The Clouds Pass” where male choral backgrounds and strings move ever upward with hope.  This is followed by another of the more melancholic tracks, “Four Knocks.”  These come as nice breaks from the fuller orchestral segments that occupy much of the disc and it manages to give the ear a rest while exhibiting some delicate scoring.  As the disc winds down the powerfully emotional music continues to build from “Song for Ten” through the beautiful;y exquisite “Vale Decem.”  The final track whets the appetite for Gold’s music for Series 5 with a new thematic presentation for “The New Doctor.”

    Gold makes a point of the fact that many of the recordings we hear on this release are essentially the first or second sight-reading takes.  It proves just how fine an ensemble the BBC National Orchestra of Wales is under the direction again of Ben Foster.  The music has been, for the most part, presented in its narrative order.  If you have not yet heard Gold’s scores for Doctor Who, you are really missing some fine music.