When you hear as much music as I get to on a regular basis, you have to hope to get some things that you can really just enjoy on their own.  As a reviewer, there are generally three kinds of releases:  great scores that basically have you trying to come up with new adjectives or descriptions that try to make sense of what you are hearing (for new styles or unknown composers especially), mediocre or middle-of-the-road works that are neither "great" or awful but will be enjoyable based on your own personal taste (or the weather, what you had for breakfast, etc.), and just horrible stuff that you want to be nice about.  The latter things are actually the easiest to write about.

I've mentioned earlier hear the 1957 Oscar nominated scores.  The winner then was Victor Young's Around the World in 80 Days.  This epic Michael Todd film is among Hollywood's finest Golden Age extravaganzas and Young's score moves through a variety of world music as the balloonists travel around the world.  There is a Spanish section, music using Hindu instruments, a fascinating Asian-influenced sequence with chanting in "Royal Barge of Siam," and stock "Indian" music in "Sioux Attack" (also using music from "William Tell").  But most importantly is one of Young's greatest screen waltz themes, "Around the World."  This delightful melody is heard throughout the score and is orchestrated so wonderfully each time it appears.  There is a lot to like about this score and it is the best way to spend 70+ minutes of your life.  Young was a great melodist and many of his songs are still a part of the standard repertoire (at least of jazz musicians).  This is one of those CDs every fan of film music should add to their collection.  The original LP was even #1 for 10 weeks back in 1957.

Now jump ahead 50 years to Guillermo del Torro's fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth.  The Academy-nominated score is by Spanish composer Javier Navarrete.  This score is a lot more difficult but no less rewarding.  It is held together by a thematic idea, "Mercedes Lullaby," that gets deconstructed along the way.  The labyrinth itself is a musical character with its own track.  It's shadow is cast upon all of the music and its impact twists and confuses the other thematic material it comes into contact with along the way changing them subtly.  These two primary musical components make up the primary fabric of the score as it plays along.  Navarrete is also equally adept at incorporating silences as part of his musical language in ways that allow on-screen action to insert themselves without damaging the organic way the music accompanies the images.  Ultimately, one hears why this score has impressed itself among the film's supporters.  It is among the composer's finest musical contributions that has much to recommend it.  Having also been recorded in Prague, the overall orchestral sound has a completely different ambience than what Hollywood soundstages produce.  Though this is really a typical sound for European film music recording.  If you are a fan of Howard Shore's music you may find hints of a parallel style here.  The Mercedes theme bears some resemblance to Morricone and there are even some wordless choral music one hears in Danny Elfman's music.  But these are embedded into Navarrete's musical fabric in his own style.  It is a powerful score that will bear repeated listens.

So two scores that are widely different in their musical language and reflective of the time in which they are written.  Sometimes those of us who follow the film music scene wonder if the Academy knows what they are doing.  But here are two examples that illustrate that sometimes they really do know.

Today marks the birthdays of two quite different musical voices:  Philip Glass (1937) and Franz Schubert (1797-1828). 

SCHUBERT

Schubert is perhaps one of the great song writers of the 19th Century.  Who has not studied his "Erlkonig" in theory or music history classes.  It's a bugger to play and the stamina needed by a pianist to make it through the song suggests that Schubert was not the genteel musician that he is often made out to be.  It is really through the tremendous number of "lieder" that Schubert is worth the "great" composer status.  He is also known for the two movement fragments that make up the "Unfinished" Symphony (known to 80s kids as the theme used in The Smurfs).  Schubert is an interestingly subtle orchetral colorist.  It is often hard to appreciate that if you are a young player in an orchestra.  Most Schubert symphony recordings tend to suffer from an attempt to either saddle him as the inheritor of Beethoven, thus muddying the music, or as an incapable orchestrator, thus speeding through the music. 

I have always enjoyed the way the great Sir Thomas Beecham approached Schubert.  The symphonies really sparkle when they need to and enter into the depth of early German Romanticism when appropriate under his baton.  The piano sonatas are more difficult works to enter into because they combine Mozartian sublimity with Beethoven emotion.  Schubert seems to work better in miniatures like the Impromptus but the sonatas can be rewarding.  Andras Schif and Mitsuko Uchida seem to have found the right approach in their recorded versions of these sonatas.  Murray Perahia's recordings of the smaller pieces are delightful.

Here are a few suggested recordings to get you started:

GLASS

Philip Glass is often noted as being the "father" of minimalism.  This technique was amply demonstrated in the classic Glassworks.  There as other early releases, Glass's music seemed to not quite fit into popular sounds or classical ones and these early experiments may have given rise to other musics later categorized as "New Age." 

Glass's style continues to evolve proving that what seemed like simple and mindless repetition had a greater potential for exploration.  What is interesting to hear over the course of Glass's musical output is the subtle blending of instruments within the steady pulse.  It is actually almost inherently "Impressionistic" in its shimmering blend of sounds.  More recent works are finding ways to incorporate world music sounds and fragments and Glass has begun to incorporate flashes of orchestral color that takes a page from the post-minimalist movement.  But most can identify a Glass piece from the opening few bars and that in itself is a major accomplishment.

The composer has found himself entering the realm of film music in the last couple of decades.  His music for the Johnny Depp 2004 horror story, Secret Window, was an amazing piece of film music.  But he is better known for his work on Scorsese's Kundun (1997) which received both Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.  Also worth a listen is the fascinating final score to Godfrey Reggio's "qatsi trilogy," Naqoyqatsi one of the best scores of 2002.  This past year he provided music for several films.  Roving Mars is a documentary that falls along the lines of most of Glass's music.  It is harder to see this particular score being much different from much of his other work.  The Illusionist is really one of his best efforts for commercial film and here we hear Glass incorporating thematic and melodic development into the fabric of his pulsing accompaniments.  It is a darker cousing to his music for The Hours.  The recording (and DVD presentation) is a little heavy on the bass though.  Finally, Glass has been nominated for his work on Notes on a Scandal.  I'll talk more of this score in the next few weeks.