Reviews

 

Monday, 10 July 2006—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Review of Atlanta Symphony SummerTime Sounds Concert on Saturday, July 8
By Pierre Ruhe

ASO's Homage to Movies Has Punch

CONCERT REVIEW

Is there a trick to composing a Hollywood hit?

Almost all the scores heard on a program of familiar movie soundtracks Saturday evening in Symphony Hall followed a pattern. You start with a big tune --- a bold, martial, sweeping, Roman Empire-in-outer-space sort of tune --- and pad it with surging brass and swooning violins. That's it, you're done. If your tune sticks in the ear, and the picture pulls down enough box office, you might have a silver screen classic on your hands.

Not every Hollywood soundtrack follows this oversimplified recipe, of course, but the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and conducting fellow Laura Jackson, in their very appealing 70-minute survey, picked music that met this minimal standard of memorability.

Composer John Williams is the model here. Linked with the films, Williams' genius is for creating potent pieces of music that are almost jingoistic in the way they stir our cultural patriotism. Despite their exotic locales and foreign (or alien) personnel, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Star Wars," heard as symphonic suites, whip up a mood of cultural invincibility. Decades after the original movies premiered, this music defines America of the late 20th century; no piece of concert-hall classical music from the same era comes even close.

Williams' music reveals deep-seated, self-evident truths --- to us, at least --- about why Americans are winners. The same confidence --- perceived as arrogance by outsiders? --- could be said of Johann Strauss Jr.'s "On the Beautiful Blue Danube," a waltz that accompanied the orbiting space station of "2001: A Space Odyssey." The authority and elegance of this popular waltz from the 1860s was derived from the power and cultural vitality of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Throughout Saturday's concert, the music was accompanied by publicity stills from each film, projected onto three large screens hung over the stage --- E.T. craning his neck like a turtle without a shell, backed by another Williams score, equally famous but sappier; Johnny Depp in mascara and pretty-boy glam for "Pirates of the Caribbean," with Klaus Badelt's epic, intricate music; the staccato'd theme to "Mission: Impossible" by Lalo Schifrin; the lounge-lizard cool of Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther."

Jackson conducted everything with heightened passion, often delivering more punch and verve than on the original soundtrack.


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