Stephen_Murray's Full Review: The Red Violin - Music from the Motion Picture
I like the "Red Violin" music more than I liked the movie. Violinist Joshua Bell (whom I hear most every year performing with the San Francisco Symphony) was touring with the 17/5-minute Chaconne composed by John Corigliano before the movie was released. The Chaconne is a dense work that I could not some close to absorbing on a first hearing, and I had no idea how it fit into the movie.
I saw the movie under conditions that were far from ideal—an in-flight movie without my own headphones with the distraction from it of watching a full lunar eclipse. The movie did not win that competition for my attention, but had some interesting stuff, especially its music.
Having played the "soundtrack" recording many times and the Chaconne which is included as an appendix to it, I can hear themes from the movie (especially, the haunting "Anna's Theme" that recurs in all five times/spaces of the movie) in the Chaconne, though it does not depend on familiarity with them (just as, for instance, the ecstatic "Alexander Nevsky" cantata is moving music, not just movie music... or an even better example from the same composer, since I have never seen the movie, "The Lieutenant Kijie Suite" depends not at all for memories of the movie (the way that, at least for me, I enjoy Ennio Morricone's "Jill's Theme" in part for its triggering memories of Claudia Cardinale in "Once Upon a Time in the West")).
Composer John Corigliano's most notable previous film score was for "Altered States." Until he delivered "The Ghosts of Versailles" on a commission from the Metropolitan Opera, I thought of him as a rather astringent late modernist, his music more related to that of Elliot Carter than to that of Max Steiner. Corigliano's (1990) First Symphony, commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony had been his greatest success d'estime. Not least because it was presented as representing feelings of loss, anger, and frustration from the first decade of AIDS, the symphony was programmed many places during the early 1980s. It is a powerful and difficult work that does not seem to have made it into the repertoire after its initial round of performances, though I think it is superior to a number of Shostakovich symphonies (to which it relates in mood).
"The Ghosts of Versailles" and the "Red Violin" music are clearly post-modernist, with pastiches of older kinds of music (and settings in past times). The music is, undoubtedly, too frequently discordant for many opera mavens and consumers of movie soundtracks, but the lyrical gift that was sometimes apparent (audible) in Corigliano's First Symphony and Clarinet Concerto has developed or been given greater scope in the works for stage and screen.
The disc begins with "Anna's Theme" even before the music for the opening title. After that, it proceeds chronologically through the end titles, followed by the Chaconne. The oldest section, Cremona, where the violin was made, does not attempt to sound like the period. Indeed, "The Death of Anna" reminded me of Ligetti rather than any attempt at writing in archaic modes, and "The Birth of the Violin" brings Berg to mind (not his violin concerto, but his "Lyrical Suite"). The next, Viennese, section, however, has some echoes of Bach's concerto for two violins, and a particularly bravura (post-rococo) showpiece, "Etudes: Death of Kaspar" in which the violin speeds up with a metronome that abruptly stops.
The following, Oxford, section has gypsy (Romani) fiddling, in which Joshua Bell gets to channel Niccolo Paganini in a cadenza and concert. (within the movie) both of which have many double-stops. Before that, however, there is a stately journey across Europe that seems to be to draw on Purcell and Handel. Midway, the gypsy violin takes over, mostly alone, segueing into the cadenza, which goes very high and is generally plangent. "Coitus musicalis" (!) is quite yearning--more interruptus than ecstatic consummation, and rather soundtracky (conventional, sad but lush Hollywood music).
There is some vaguely orientalist (that is western version of eastern music) in the Shanghai section, along with the Children's Chorus of the Shanghai Film Studio performing "Death of Chou Yuan" (a track I skip when I play the disc).
The contemporary, Montreal, section has quite mysterious music, particularly "Morritz's Theme," which has some affinities to Alban Berg's violin concerto (at least to its mournfulness). The end titles have "Anna's theme" (the leitmotif of both the movie's score and Corigliano's Chaconne) repeated, along with some of the wordless female chorus that is heard from periodically in the soundtrack.
I turn the bass down a bit, though it seems that the bass-heavy recording was approved by the composer, who was executive producer of the recording.
Joshua Bell is superb in all the eras, whether called on for brilliance and virtuosity or for soulfulness. With Anne-Sophie Mutter and Maxim Vengerov having recently turned in shockingly bad recordings of standard repertoire, and Vengerov's lack of involvement in developing new music, Joshua Bell seems to me the top violinist du jour.
Bell has premiered a violin concerto derived from "The Red Violin" that was conducted with the Los Angeles Symphony by Esa-Pekka Salonen, who conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in the recording of the Chaconne and the soundtrack of the motion picture. The soundtrack won an Oscar, one of the occasional instances of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Standards getting something right.
BTW, the statements by Corigliano and
the film's director languages.Francois Girard in the booklet are uninformative, though there are many black-and-white stills from the movie spread across the versions in multiple languages.
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