Time for just three fairly quick little reviews this week.

First up is music for the comic book series Spooks, a military horror comic book series that was turned into a graphic novel.  The four issues appeared together in July of this year after amazing sales last February.  The genesis of the story and art comes from Larry Hama and Ryan Schifrin, the latter is the son of composer Lalo Schifrin.  Ryan’s film Abominable featured a wonderful score from his father, one of the highlights from 2006.  The graphic novel featured this 20 minutes of music that you could download via iTunes and now a limited edition of the score on CD is being made available.  The disc features four tracks by Schifrin and four by Andy Garfield.  Garfield has been involved in mostly direct-to-video and TV series projects for the past decade.  This will be the first opportunity for many to hear his work highlighted.

The tracks by Schifrin feature exciting action cues (“The Forces of Darkness” and the similar “The Final Battle”) that is matched by a Garfield’s Zimmer-esque “The Department of Supernatural Defense” (which owes a lot to the action sequences of The Rock).  Schifrin’s “Omega Team” is like an updated synth mock-up of his Mission Impossible theme complete with asymmetrical rhythms and exciting accented offbeats.  “Zach and Felicia” is a lyric Schifrin track with a little jazzy feel arranged for strings and horn sounds.  Garfield shows off his understanding of contemporary aleatoric technique before returning to action/horror styles in “The Graveyard.”  In short, two different musical approaches from the old and new schools of film composition that will be a curiosity for Schifrin fans.

Then there is Towelhead featuring a score by Thomas Newman which he wrote prior to Wall-E (arguably one of the best score of the year).

Debuting at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, Towelhead has been appearing at a variety of festivals throughout the country and will receive a wider release this month.  The film is adapted from a novel by Alicia Erian by American Beauty director Alan Bell.

This is a fairly minimal score in many senses of the word.  The opening “Nothing is Private” is a lot like an African Drumming piece and one recalls Steve Reich’s minimalist approach in the following musical tracks.  Newman tends to repeat an idea and rather than change the accent, simply adds other interesting layers to his primary idea thus subtly changing the character of the sounds and music.  There is a seven-note pattern that appears throughout this meager score and while interesting in its 8-bar pattern, it really does not get much chance to do anything at all.  It appears as a guitar pattern later (“Glamour Shots”) which lends a contemporary urban feel to its otherwise primal versions.  Brief forays into ambient sounds and a track with some strings (“Rain and Good Weather”) help round of this more typical Newman score.  This will be a Lakeshore iTunes download only release since there is barely 15 minutes worth of music here.

Finally, Carter Burwell gets a chance to actually score a Coen Brothers film  in Burn After Reading. 

“Earth Zoom” is a percussion piece that opens the disc, and recurs for what sound like “intrigue” action sequences, before we move into the gentle low string arpeggios and quirky thematic ideas of “A Higher Patriotism.”  The music recalls the dramatic musical approach he used in Fargo and Being John Malkovich.  These simple arpeggio ideas which often land in unexpected harmonic territory make the score a fascinating listen and Burwell finds ways to vary the orchestral colors as well.  There appear to be two specific sound clusters, one the drumming ideas that overwhelm the texture and are over-ambient (perhaps underscoring action sequences), and the arpeggiated idea cast in different instrumental colors.  Occasionally bits and pieces of these ideas appear in quicker contrast to one another before one dominates (“Seating” features hints of the percussion with eventual string arpeggios).  Something creepy is implied a couple of times towards the end of the score with the addition of a scraping creepy metallic sound.

The score appears to take the story straight as a serious drama which may help point out its humor if the payoff works on screen.  Otherwise, this is a minimalist-styled score that often recalls Glass’s film music hybrids of minimal arpeggios with thematic ideas less strictly imposed and often meandering about in the texture.  The brevity of the score presentation here may actually be a benefit as their does not appear to be too much else that Burwell can do in this score, which suggests it will work fine in its film.                   

Burn After Reading then is a score that recalls some of Burwell’s best work with moments of richer orchestration performed by a larger sounding ensemble than he has seemed to have in past outings.  Rather than being held together by specifically thematic elements, the score is constructed around specific instrumental choices and the shifts between them.  It makes the listening experience interesting, especially for fans of the composer.  The running time for this Lakeshore release is about 36 minutes.

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For fans of limited edition releases of which there have been a plethora this year, Intrada has a few copies left of Friedhofer's Boy on a Dolphin, one of his Oscar-nominated scores.  Varese announces there latest club releases which hopefully will not be as underwhelming as most of there similar releases this year.

John Williams fans will finally get a chance to have expanded editions of his scores for the three earlier Indiana Jones films which will begin with a release of Raiders of the Lost Ark that seems slightly different from an earlier expanded disc from DCC.  Then in November a set of all the scores, including this year's Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which is evidently the same disc as released earlier this year) will appear with one disc featuring an interview with the composer.  Supposedly, the 2nd and 3rd IJ scores will also be relesed separately over the next few months.  And, Michael Feinstein's "Sinatra Project" released this month features a previously unrecorded song penned by Williams with lyrics by the Bergmans. 

Classical Music fans stop by later this month for a look at the final release in Bis' wonderful recordings of the Beethoven symphonies with the Minnesota Orchestra.  I'll be taking a listen to the remaining recordings in this cycle.  The MN Orchestra has an affinity for Beethoven that goes back to the days of Skrowaczewski and it will be good to hear what BIS has to offer here.

The final review of 3 recent Beethoven releases with the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Osma Vanska.

Symphony #4 in Bb, Op. 60 (BIS 1416)

Symphony #5 in c, Op. 67 (BIS 1416)

In this, the first release of this new BIS cycle from 2004, we get two quite different works.  Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony always strikes me as one of those hesitant pauses recovering from the exhaustion of a greater work.  Though in Beethoven’s case, shades of greatness seem to be a norm rather than an exception.  As in the recording discussed above, we have two works then of differing natures.  One that stands more firmly in the Haydn tradition and one that just zooms off into the obsessive motivic development of organic music that is a hallmark of Beethoven.  Interestingly, Roger Norrington’s cycle paired these two works as well.

The fourth symphony begins cautiously, almost as if Beethoven needs to stick his toe back into the water carefully.  The whole opening of the first movement proceeds in this fashion moving back and forth from minor to major unsure of itself.  Thematic ideas are also harder to distinguish in the thematic material that follows in the joyful “Allegro.”  These structural innovations are handled with great ease in this performance without calling attention to the seeming quirkiness of Beethoven’s vision for this work. The swelling strings before the repeat of the exposition come across as the first thematic idea but we have been fooled, of course, and we are launched off into a development section.  If you know your classical forms, the fourth is a symphony to laugh out loud with as the joke is always on us.  It does seem to wear less well than the others and is completely overshadowed by it successor.  Yet, Vanska and the Minnesotans make a case for this piece taken on its own merits.  Here it feels like the work of a mind that tries to grasp at the wide range of human emotion and all the pathos that that means to an early 19^th Century mind.  Even as the fourth movement spins along one practically hears the deconstruction of symphonic form which will lead Beethoven creatively to his next symphonic masterpiece, the Fifth Symphony.

I always felt that the best way to approach the middle of Beethoven’s symphonies with an orchestra would be to start somewhere other than the opening bars of the first movement.  That way we could get feel for how we would approach those fateful four beats that open the work.  Vanska propels the first movement along with a boundless energy that does not smack of the affectedness often found in this work.  Instead of trying to milk every fermata and dramatic pause, Vanska takes an approach that stays truer to the textual use of these musical devices.  There is no gamesmanship or musical snobbery here, just continued joy and energy that moves along in from section to section.  Those opening beats are performed throughout the first movement in tempo and with the kind of rhythmic attention to detail tossed to the wind in so many performances.  The work as a result does not bog down as it heads into the transition section helping to make sense of the outbursts more than other recorded performances.  The oboe solo in the center is the one place where things seem to pause dramatically but both soloist and conductor know that this is not the place for personal emotiveness beyond the text.  Again, Vanska is faithful to letting Beethoven’s music shine through without centuries of detritus that have build up around it.  In subsequent movements he stays faithful to steady tempos that are used to shape themes rather than the other way around.  The accelerando in the final movement is perfect and feels so musical that you practically stand up with it.  His approach tends then to the Classical understanding of these pieces rather than trying to make these works sound in a tradition that ends up in Mahler.  It is what sets these performances truly among the finest additions to the Beethoven catalog.

My favorite recording of the 5^th symphony has always been Pierre Monteux’s with the London Symphony.  There is something to be said for the approach here being closer to that one in many respects.  The difference here lies in the unbelievable sound quality.