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Review of The Red Violin (John Corigliano)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you are either an established enthusiast of John
Corigliano's concert works or appreciate modern classical crossover
styles in your film scores.
Avoid it... if you expect this score to sound like anything other than an arthouse venture, for Corigliano's dramatic range, while effective for the film, is extremely limited in its high-pitched tones and constricted dynamic scope.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Red Violin: (John Corigliano) The extremely
unique story of The Red Violin is what propelled it to moderate
arthouse success, winning it a single Academy Award for its score.
Director François Girard and his co-writer, Don McKellar, were fond of
telling stories from many perspectives, and in the case of The Red
Violin, the narrative follows the life of a famed violin from its
birth in 1681 to its restoration and sale in 1997. The film shifts from
the auction house to each major period in the history of the instrument,
never straying from its focus on the inanimate object long enough to
truly develop any of the characters who come across its path. This lack
of development of any of the human characters is what restrained The
Red Violin from receiving top critical marks; no matter how
compelling the story of an object can be, it cannot rival the connection
that the audience would rather form with a person. With people that are
often shallow, The Red Violin relies on the immense history of
the instrument, as well as some surprising shenanigans in the 1990's
portion of the story, to float audience interest. Girard obviously knew
that the score for the film was going to be of significant importance,
and he sought the services of opera, concert house, and classical writer
John Corigliano to provide a convincing aural personality for the
violin. The New York-based Corigliano was already extremely respected
for his modern compositions, and his limited film score work has
translated much of that popularity to the soundtrack-collecting
community. The Red Violin was only the composer's third film
score, with the Oscar-nominated 1980 score for Altered States
still widely respected. His tarnished experience on 1985's obscure
Revolution led him back to his comfort zone, though he would
receive fame in the movie business once again when his work for The
Red Violin won the Oscar in somewhat of an upset. His fans have
always embraced the career of Elliot Goldenthal, a pupil of Corigliano
who has translated many of the composer's techniques into his own highly
varied and distinctly stylistic film scores. Goldenthal's fan base is
likely to be attracted to the sensibilities that Corigliano establishes
in The Red Violin, a score aimed at a very specific listening
audience.
Due to delays in the production schedule of The Red Violin, Corigliano ultimately used an 18-minute concert piece that was supposed to be inspired by the soundtrack as the basis for the final score. His approach to the work is exactly as one would expect: he creates a musical soul for the violin (and the woman who inspired it in somewhat gruesome ways) and adapts it to the various time periods of the film, eventually developing into his modern techniques for the 1990's sequence. The instrument is haunted by the death of the famed violin-maker's wife, and so the spirit and theme heard in the solo female vocals of "Anna's Theme" are eventually transferred into the domain of the high strings in both that cue and "Main Title." There is an undercurrent of tension in this theme, an abrasive edge that understandably inhabits "Birth of the Red Violin" and prevails in several later cues. The tone of the ensemble contributes to this occasionally grating edge. Corigliano bases most of the score in the string section, sometimes stripping the sound down to chamber quartet size. There is no brass, and percussion and woodwinds are limited to specific geographical purposes in the Oxford sequence of the film. As such, the score relies heavily on the performances on violin by Joshua Bell and the conducting of Esa-Pekka Salonen to exude as much drama and personality as possible from the limited soundscape. For the most part, they succeed, though the tone of The Red Violin is so harshly whiny in the treble region that it will likely repulse listeners who are attracted to the lower dynamic range of most modern film scores. Some of this troublesome aspect of the score is diminished by the Montreal sequence, especially with the addition of a theme for Samuel L. Jackson's character and a cue of tumultuous action in "The Theft." It's easy to understand why this score won the Oscar, however. The mere style that results from a script with an instrument as its central character is too appealing in its classicism to resist. But for the mainstream, Corigliano is no John Williams, and the lack of Williams' habit of adapting a classical stance into a broader soundscape (as with Schindler's List) restrains The Red Violin from being a truly viable recommendation for film score collectors. For this crowd, the score remains an interesting, but somewhat overrated curiosity. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 66:08
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes notes from both John Corigliano and François Girard
about the film and score (translated into several different languages). Corigliano's
comments are as follows:
I'd assumed that, as usual in film, I wouldn't be required to write the score until the film was completed, except for a number of on-camera "cues," or occasions in which the film's characters themselves perform. So I then composed a singable theme, hummed by the violin master's wife Anna, which mutates into a solo violin melody. Underpinning the theme is an inexorable seven-chord chaconne, evoking the Tarot and the fate it signals; and several solo etudes, drawn from Anna's theme, for the two virtuosi of the Vienna and Oxford sequences. Then plans changed. Filming, meant to conclude early this summer, was pushed back till early fall; performances of the concert piece, though, remained set for late November. Consequently the concert piece, the Chaconne, was built just on the materials I had - a good thing, as it turns out, because I now had the freedom, as well as the need, to explore these materials to a greater extent than I might have, had I been expected to condense an hour's worth of music into a coherent single movement. Thus, in a curiously backwards way, the film's underscoring drew much of its inspiration from the concert work, played by Joshua Bell on this recording."
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