RSNO, 30/11/2019
Danny Elfman Gala
Serenada Schizophrana - I Forget (Amy Higgins, soprano)
Violin Concerto Eleven Eleven (Sandy Cameron, violin)
Batman - Suite
Alice in Wonderland - end credits (Alistair Hillis, treble)
Edward Scissorhands - Suite (Sandy Cameron)
RSNO Chorus
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
John Mauceri
As I am not any sort of rocker, Danny Elfman did not get on to my radar until he started writing film music, and even then it was not his first outing, but Beetlejuice which first impinged. Then came Batman, and the rest, as they say, was history. Like several other major film composers who similarly favour full-scale orchestral scores, Elfman began to venture into 'concert' composition, that is, works written for the classical music stage, so this concert, given in the presence of the composer, featured a first half of some of those concert works, and a second half of some of his best-known film scores.
On the strength of that I heard tonight, this foray into the classical world has been a good thing for Elfman. It's been my impression lately that his film scores have been lacking his very distinctive touch, and become rather more generic. Based on the two pieces played here, neither of which I knew, it's absolutely not true of his concert music; these were both instantly recognisable as Elfman's work. You immediately hear those shifting layers of strings, and the brass chorales, with the frosting of tuned percussion on top, his sound world is very personal and very recognisable.
"I Forget" is the fifth movement of the Serenada Schizophrana, which was his first full concert work, created in 2005. It's full of quivering, breathless writing for the strings with ostinato percussion, over which a female chorus and soloist sing a Spanish text about losing inspiration, and that without dreams, life becomes meaningless. The text, I found in later research before starting to write this blog, because it was not printed in the programme, which was a pity. On the other hand, although the timbre of the singing was delicately lovely, the diction was non-existant; had I not been told the text was in Spanish, I would have had no idea.
The title of Elfman's new Violin Concerto, Eleven Eleven, is not a date reference, but simply the total number of bars in the complete concerto, 1,111. It's a big work, four movements lasting just over 40 minutes, that makes plenty of demands of the soloist, and aside from Elfman's trademark skittishness, can also bring up big, lyrical passages that carry distinct undertones of Prokofiev. The second movement is a demonic perpertuum mobile of a scherzo, which also features the cadenza shared with the percussion section, an unusual touch, while the third movement brings the restless activity to a halt, with a slow, brooding exploration of its four-note motif. Violinist Sandy Cameron is an elfin figure, as restless as the music, throwing herself into it without reserve, as much physically as musically. She plays her Guarneri violin amplified, but I was sitting too close to the stage for that to matter to me - the speakers were pointed behind me - and I don't consequently quite understand why there was any need for that amplification.
When the pre-movie chatter about Tim Burton's new take on Batman really got going, the main topic on the musical side was the proposed contribution to the score of songs by the Artist-then-known-as-Prince. At the time (1989), my thoughts were unimpressed, but accepting; I could live with Prince songs somewhat better than some other artists of the period. On coming out of the film, I had barely noticed Prince's contribution at all, my head was full of Elfman's magnificent score, a true aural match to the neo-Deco splendour of production designer Anton Furst's Gotham sets. It remains, thirty years on, one of my favourite film scores, grand and sombre, but with that wonderfully insane waltz at its heart, a kind of mad cross between Richard Rodgers and Richard Strauss. The follow-up, Batman Returns, didn't quite have that brilliant focus, though it still had its moments, and the same was true of the film itself. The Batman Suite played here included music from both films, and drew on the chorus again, very much treated as part of the orchestral texture, like another instrumental section, singing mostly wordlessly.
Elfman is to Burton what Bernard Hermann was to Alfred Hitchcock. The alchemy is not always perfect, and it certainly works best when Burton is tapping into the fantastic. The End Title music of Alice in Wonderland (2010), played here, actually rather resembles "I Forget", with a similar, translucent texture, restless pulse, and the ethereal female chorus, this time with a treble soloist (the excellent Alistair Hillis). The text was distinctly more discernible this time, fortunately.
There's a similar ethereal quality in the music for Edward Scissorhands, the next Burton/Elfman collaboration after Batman, suitable for the fairy-tale atmosphere of much of the film, and the score again prominently features a wordless chorus. The Suite, however, creates a central scherzo section with the 'urban' music, and allowed Sandy Cameron to return for a short, virtuoso interpolation, before the return of the wistful melancholy of the main material.
That was the official end of the concert, but how could they leave things without playing what is probably Elfman's best known credit worldwide, the title track from The Simpsons, in all its jubilant, raucous wackiness, much to the audience's pleasure. This is a concert that has toured quite extensively, from what I've seen, and Mauceri is certainly a staunch and able defender of Elfman's work, regardless of the orchestra. However, the RSNO has its fair share of film work under its belt too, and has recorded the Concerto, with Cameron and under Mauceri, last year (it was premiered in 2017), so the team as a whole was well practiced, and it showed. This was a slickly delivered package, but Elfman's music is more than entertaining enough to fill a concert, and it's good to hear that the personal touches - the febrile energy, the shimmering orchestrations - that have faded a little from some of his most recent film scores are still there to be enjoyed.
[Next : 1st December]
Serenada Schizophrana - I Forget (Amy Higgins, soprano)
Violin Concerto Eleven Eleven (Sandy Cameron, violin)
Batman - Suite
Alice in Wonderland - end credits (Alistair Hillis, treble)
Edward Scissorhands - Suite (Sandy Cameron)
RSNO Chorus
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
John Mauceri
As I am not any sort of rocker, Danny Elfman did not get on to my radar until he started writing film music, and even then it was not his first outing, but Beetlejuice which first impinged. Then came Batman, and the rest, as they say, was history. Like several other major film composers who similarly favour full-scale orchestral scores, Elfman began to venture into 'concert' composition, that is, works written for the classical music stage, so this concert, given in the presence of the composer, featured a first half of some of those concert works, and a second half of some of his best-known film scores.
On the strength of that I heard tonight, this foray into the classical world has been a good thing for Elfman. It's been my impression lately that his film scores have been lacking his very distinctive touch, and become rather more generic. Based on the two pieces played here, neither of which I knew, it's absolutely not true of his concert music; these were both instantly recognisable as Elfman's work. You immediately hear those shifting layers of strings, and the brass chorales, with the frosting of tuned percussion on top, his sound world is very personal and very recognisable.
"I Forget" is the fifth movement of the Serenada Schizophrana, which was his first full concert work, created in 2005. It's full of quivering, breathless writing for the strings with ostinato percussion, over which a female chorus and soloist sing a Spanish text about losing inspiration, and that without dreams, life becomes meaningless. The text, I found in later research before starting to write this blog, because it was not printed in the programme, which was a pity. On the other hand, although the timbre of the singing was delicately lovely, the diction was non-existant; had I not been told the text was in Spanish, I would have had no idea.
The title of Elfman's new Violin Concerto, Eleven Eleven, is not a date reference, but simply the total number of bars in the complete concerto, 1,111. It's a big work, four movements lasting just over 40 minutes, that makes plenty of demands of the soloist, and aside from Elfman's trademark skittishness, can also bring up big, lyrical passages that carry distinct undertones of Prokofiev. The second movement is a demonic perpertuum mobile of a scherzo, which also features the cadenza shared with the percussion section, an unusual touch, while the third movement brings the restless activity to a halt, with a slow, brooding exploration of its four-note motif. Violinist Sandy Cameron is an elfin figure, as restless as the music, throwing herself into it without reserve, as much physically as musically. She plays her Guarneri violin amplified, but I was sitting too close to the stage for that to matter to me - the speakers were pointed behind me - and I don't consequently quite understand why there was any need for that amplification.
When the pre-movie chatter about Tim Burton's new take on Batman really got going, the main topic on the musical side was the proposed contribution to the score of songs by the Artist-then-known-as-Prince. At the time (1989), my thoughts were unimpressed, but accepting; I could live with Prince songs somewhat better than some other artists of the period. On coming out of the film, I had barely noticed Prince's contribution at all, my head was full of Elfman's magnificent score, a true aural match to the neo-Deco splendour of production designer Anton Furst's Gotham sets. It remains, thirty years on, one of my favourite film scores, grand and sombre, but with that wonderfully insane waltz at its heart, a kind of mad cross between Richard Rodgers and Richard Strauss. The follow-up, Batman Returns, didn't quite have that brilliant focus, though it still had its moments, and the same was true of the film itself. The Batman Suite played here included music from both films, and drew on the chorus again, very much treated as part of the orchestral texture, like another instrumental section, singing mostly wordlessly.
Elfman is to Burton what Bernard Hermann was to Alfred Hitchcock. The alchemy is not always perfect, and it certainly works best when Burton is tapping into the fantastic. The End Title music of Alice in Wonderland (2010), played here, actually rather resembles "I Forget", with a similar, translucent texture, restless pulse, and the ethereal female chorus, this time with a treble soloist (the excellent Alistair Hillis). The text was distinctly more discernible this time, fortunately.
There's a similar ethereal quality in the music for Edward Scissorhands, the next Burton/Elfman collaboration after Batman, suitable for the fairy-tale atmosphere of much of the film, and the score again prominently features a wordless chorus. The Suite, however, creates a central scherzo section with the 'urban' music, and allowed Sandy Cameron to return for a short, virtuoso interpolation, before the return of the wistful melancholy of the main material.
That was the official end of the concert, but how could they leave things without playing what is probably Elfman's best known credit worldwide, the title track from The Simpsons, in all its jubilant, raucous wackiness, much to the audience's pleasure. This is a concert that has toured quite extensively, from what I've seen, and Mauceri is certainly a staunch and able defender of Elfman's work, regardless of the orchestra. However, the RSNO has its fair share of film work under its belt too, and has recorded the Concerto, with Cameron and under Mauceri, last year (it was premiered in 2017), so the team as a whole was well practiced, and it showed. This was a slickly delivered package, but Elfman's music is more than entertaining enough to fill a concert, and it's good to hear that the personal touches - the febrile energy, the shimmering orchestrations - that have faded a little from some of his most recent film scores are still there to be enjoyed.
[Next : 1st December]