It is a little early perhaps, but I am taking a couple of days away from the computer and so a double post is in order today.
Here are five standout discs new to my personal library that are recommended from the many piles of recordings that come my way.
First up, Marco Beltrami's score for 3:10 to Yuma. I've said about all I can say about this score in my Oscar analysis but I find this to be a fascinating and coherent listen on disc. Maybe I just miss new Morricone scores.
Though I have not really gotten into the new Doctor Who....I'm just unable to see anyone but Tom Baker in the role I guess...Murray Gold's score for each series is truly some of the best music being written for television. It helps that he gets to use a full orchestra and chorus amidst some of the electronics as well. But this might just be the best thing about the series. Silva released Doctor Who: Series Three scores late last year and I finally managed to pick up a copy. Both this and the previous disc are well worth your time if you like sci-fi orchestral scores.
And now for something completely different, Mahler. Michael Tilson Thomas continues to prove that he is one of our best conductors of his generation. And thank goodness the San Francisco Symphony has their own label and was willing to commit his Mahler cycle to disc. The recording of the 3rd is my favorite next to an old Horenstein performance. This month I caught up with the release of Mahler's "Symphony No. 7". The recording recieved a Grammy award (rarely an indication of anything when it comes to Classical music) but this is a stellar performance, complete on 1 disc (!), that I think rivals Thomas's mentor, Leonard Bernstein. This is a hard symphony to get into but somehow the performance is quite engaging. I think the energy is helped by the live recording setting, not obtrusive at all here.
Cut from a similar cloth, but in different tonal language, is Korngold's opera Das Wunder der Heliane. The plot is not much to get excited about. The king wants sex with his queen who won't put out. She meets with a stranger in prison who desires her and whatever it is they consummate is on some astral plane. All the same it condemns them both to death. Yes, it is a bit odd and so a part of its time. But the music is fascinating. This is Korngold's masterpiece of orchestration and color. You can hear bits and pieces that will find parallels in his film scores in the 1930s, but this is Korngold stretching the inherited Wagnerian chromaticism to new heights. It is really hard to determine what key we are in, and yet things magically resolve and sound so natural that it never distracts. I'm not sure how anyone could have heard the vocals against the sheer size of the orchestral forces here, but this re-issue of John Mauceri's recording is outstanding. No big stand out arias, just lots of Korngold.
Though not a big Tiomkin fan, I found myself constantly amazed at the orchestral colors found in Land of the Pharaohs, one of the latest Film Score Monthly releases. This is quite an epic score with plenty of dated Hollywood film music sound that must have been very odd in the context of the film. Tiomkin has long stretches of underscore that have been pieced together here with the kind of loving care we have come to expect from the label. The 2-disc set features a few extra cues of different takes as well to round off a shorter first disc. But for Tiomkin fans it is 100 some minutes of pure pleasure.
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