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Review of Pas de Deux (James Horner)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you seek what essentially amounts to a 28-minute bonus
James Horner score to appreciate after his death, the composer's
predictable stylistic mannerisms beautifully expressed by the solo and
ensemble performers.
Avoid it... if you expect to hear traditional thematic development equal to a film score or more than pensive, meandering material akin to a light 1990's drama for Horner until the rousing five-minute conclusion.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Pas de Deux: (James Horner) The death of composer
James Horner in a June 2015 plane accident represented one of the most
sudden and devastating blows to the film music industry in its history,
but if there was any consolation during this time of loss, it was the
fact that Horner had been extremely busy in 2014 and early 2015 writing
music for films and returning after many decades to the concert scene.
The composer had become disillusioned with the methods and atmosphere of
Hollywood over the prior ten years and had retreated into a pattern of
writing music for only his established and trusted collaborators. It was
in part out of this frustration with the industry that he decided to
once again embrace concert writing in the 2010's, a return to his roots
prior to film music stardom. After Horner scored Harald Zwart's remake
of The Karate Kid in 2010, the director introduced him to the
Norwegian sibling musical duo of violinist Mari Samuelsen and cellist
Hakon Samuelsen. Zwart had set up a private performance by the pair for
Horner at his home in 2011, an evening that the composer almost missed
because of, forebodingly, problems landing his private plane. It was the
bold attempt of the Samuelsens, both fans of Horner's film music, to ask
him to write a piece specifically for them. With financing help from the
Tom Wilhelmsen Foundation, the half hour of music resulting from Horner
over a period from 2011 to 2014 was premiered in November of 2014,
featuring the Samuelsens and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Vasily Petrenko. The work was released on album along with
other contemporary music performed by the Samuelsens and accompanying
ensemble shortly before Horner's death. Despite being the first
significant double concerto for violin, cello, and full orchestra since
Johannes Brahms's "Double Concerto in A Minor" dating back to 1887, a
fact that Horner was very cognizant of, response to the premiere
performance was mixed. The audience afforded it a standing ovation but
several reviewers became bored with its rather tepid emotional restraint
for most of its length. Nevertheless, there stood a rare chance that the
piece would be performed again based on the composer's name and untimely
death. Horner was encouraged enough by the process to be commissioned in
2014 to write a concerto for four French horns on behalf of his veteran
collaborators with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. While that work was
not released before his death, Horner saw these efforts as a way to bring
his career in a full circle.
Horner did not conceive of "Pas de Deux" as a traditional concerto, but rather a duet between the featured performers and orchestra, much like what you'd hear, not surprisingly, in an extended suite for a film score featuring the soloists. He wanted to keep the atmosphere tonally accessible and use his own vocabulary for the piece's style. "It is very vaporous in its nature and the colors I chose," Horner stated at the time of the premiere. "The orchestration I did is very typical of my sense of color. It is a lot like painting for me when I talk about orchestration. It's brush strokes and colors and all about that sort of magic that happens." There is no particular "theme" per se in the work, but it's instead a stream of consciousness very much in the style of Horner's contemplative dramatic scores. One of the criticisms the concerto has received is based on the fact that it doesn't really feature flashy moments for the violin and cello apart from the ensemble. In fact, there are several minutes assembled multiple times when you don't actually hear the leads perform. Collectors of Horner's film music will rather be greeted by solemn explorations by French horn and solo woodwinds with whimsical strings in support. The progressions are all extremely familiar to Horner's career, and the first two lengthy parts of the piece will recall plenty of the composer's light 1990's dramatic film scores (and A New World). A crescendo for the full ensemble midway through the second part is a resounding highlight of these portions, but be aware that it takes fifteen minutes of peaceful meandering to reach that point. The overall highlight of the concerto for Horner's enthusiasts will be the final five minutes, during which he kicks the piece into high gear for a percussively rhythmic extension of his more engaging music for films. Not surprisingly, this is where Horner's rambling chord shifts and percussive tapping dating from Sneakers to A Beautiful Mind are referenced, with the violin in a particularly powerful position to express the key shifts. This third part concludes with Horner's standard crescendo finale format resembling Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and The Rocketeer. The remaining pieces on the album are bested by Ludovico Einaudi's "Divenire," which will remind some listeners of James Newton Howard's The Village and Defiance. Even for collectors of Horner's music, long parts of the concerto will languish in pensive understatement despite their lovely recording, and with the lack of definitive "themes," the lively third part may not be enough to save the whole for some. Those five minutes will merit a purchase of the whole for most listeners, however, the spirited send-off a fitting conclusive statement to Horner's career. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 56:28
(27:45 by James Horner)
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes extensive notation about the concerto, composer, and artists (in three languages).
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Pas de Deux are Copyright © 2015, Mercury Classics and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/18/15 (and not updated significantly since). |
