SUPERHEROES!

Adam West, narrator.; Julie Spangler, piano. May Festival Youth Chorus,
Cincinnati Pops Orchestra/John Morris Russell
Fanfare Cincinnati 002
Total Time:  55:39
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

The unexpected death of Erich Kunzel, long time conductor of the Cincinnati Pops, was a great loss to the music world and especially fans of orchestral film pops recordings.  The long history of great film music releases is an amazing legacy of popular and classic film music presented in stellar sound, though at times marred (depending on one’s point of view) by the addition of “special effects”.  The orchestra’s new conductor, John Morris Russell, debuted with the orchestra in an initial Christmas pops release.  This second release certainly is a return to the interesting program choices that Kunzel brought to disc and focuses on music from superhero films and television series.

Pops recordings are certainly an acquired taste for those who prefer “original” soundtrack performances.  Often the music is re-orchestrated, or adapted more specifically, to the needs of the ensemble often showing off various sections.  For an album such as this, one is easily appreciative of the Pops’ great brass section on display throughout the included selections.  One of the hallmarks of more recent Pops releases is a need to connect with younger audiences and the inclusion of an “arrangement” of the “Iron Man” song by Black Sabbath may do that to some extent.  It is the concluding work on the album and while well-realized, may be the one thing that wears thin over time.  The same might be said for the songs “Star-Spangled Man” and “Make Way for Tomorrow Today” which tend to shift us closer to Broadway-esque musical styles.  They are essentially contrasting material to the surrounding orchestral excitement.  There is also a unique arrangement by Rebecca Pellett of some classic superhero TV themes in a medley called “To The Rescue!”  Some will smile at the inclusion of tunes here and Adam West’s great, and somewhat hammy, narration.  One tune tends to receive too much focus however.

All of that said, the remainder of the album features some fabulous performances and is intelligently chosen from a wide swath of contemporary and classic film scores.  Elfman’s slow-building theme for Spider-Man opens the album and is well done, though not terribly impressive.  Next follows the “Captain’s March” from Silvestri’s Captain America score.  The piece is well-played but all too brief needing a bit more filling out to the four, or five-minute mark (it is just over two minutes in length).  Pete Anthony’s arrangement from The Dark Knight allows for some interesting contemporary orchestral scoring examples and is a could inclusion here.  Anthony also has a premiere recording of a commissioned piece, “The Launch”, which appears later on the album.  It is a good Copland-meets-Williams sort of fanfare to show off the orchestra.  One of the great surprises here is music from Goldsmith’s Supergirl.  The “End Credits” music receive a fine performance (minus electronic effects from the original score) and perhaps the orchestra will consider an all Goldsmith release at some point as it is obvious there is an affinity for this music.  It is followed by what may be one of the best pops recordings of Williams’ “Superman March” (including the composer’s own with Boston!).  The recording is helped by crisp playing, spot-on tempi and great audio.  The album then continues with music from more contemporary superhero films.  The suite from Thor seems a bit underwhelming musically.  The Debney selection from Iron Man 2 (“I Am Iron Man”) and John Powell’s “End Credits” from X-MEN: The Last Stand both show their musical roots in the superhero settings fo Williams and Goldsmith and make for great contrasts to the material that surrounds them on the disc.  Another of the disc’s highlights is the gorgeous “Lonely Man Theme” from Joe Harnell’s The Incredible Hulk score.  It is beautifully played by Julie Spangler in her own touching arrangement.

The variety of newer scores is certainly a positive feature of this release.  The inclusion of a couple lesser known scores helps introduce older music to young audiences as well.  The only real complaint is that the album is too short at only 55 minutes.  Many selections are at the 2-minute mark and it feels like more music within these selections would have helped fill out the album.  That said, this is really superb music making with excellent recording.  Certainly, this is another great entry in the Cincinnati Pops film music discography that bodes well for a successful future for them with their new conductor.

The summer blockbuster season is upon us and After Earth was positioned at first to be the latest #1 vehicle featuring Will Smith, though his son, Jada Pinkett Smith, is really left to carry the film whose story is by Will Smith as well.  The M. Night Shyamalan film follows this father and son who crash land on Earth some 1,000 years after humans abandoned the planet.  As much promise as the director showed earlier, it sometimes feels as if each subsequent film is less satisfying and this one opened to abysmal reviews.  That aside, the best part is that James Newton Howard, who has scored all the director’s films since 1999’s The Sixth Sense, can often find plenty interesting things to add musically and After Earth is likely to be the only memorable aspect of this film when the dust settles.   

The opening bars of “The History of Man” presents the sort of heavy orchestral scoring that Howard has used for other larger-than-life action adventure scores.  Strong thematic writing, often epically sweeping in lower strings or highlighted in slower sections by piano, makes this a rather interesting score.  The lower end of the orchestra provides a really warm bass support to some of Howard’s melodic content.  In “Pack Your Bags,” we hear a rather magical sound float around the texture with a mix of great horn writing and choral support that shifts into the sort of post-Zimmer sound the composer has added to his arsenal.  There are plenty of moments for action music in the film, but the more primal ideas, heard first in “Ship Tears Apart,” are blended with atmospheric orchestral writing among Howard’s harshest and darkest (at times reminiscent of his work in Dreamcatcher).  There is a visceral edge to this music applying a variety of contemporary techniques to create tension and dissonance.  This balanced by the lyrical thematic material, a beautiful presentation which appears in “Kitai Finds Cypher” and becomes important musically in subsequent sections focusing on Kitai’s character.  The shifts between these three narrative developments results in a rather fascinating listen.  Most interesting though is that Howard’s score must communicate these shifts in relatively small moments of time, and that they are presented here in these smaller segments rather than in larger, substantial edits.  “Baboons” is one of these longer edits filled with the sounds of ethnic winds and percussion in quite eerie musical underscoring (used for sequences of connected to animal attacks) that shifts into the action tropes as it plays along, though it unfortunately gets dialed out.        

 After Earth is a score that feels like it takes pages from Howard’s experiences on projects such as Batman Begins and melds them with the sort of atmospheric writing of previous Shyamalan scores to create a rather rich musical tapestry.  Thematically, the score has many highlights that are well balanced with the primal and adventurous writing.  Unfortunately, there are plenty of places where one wishes the music would have been allowed to play out, even the final track just gets dialed down, no doubt to make way for the ubiquitous pop song from which purchases of this release are graciously spared.