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Review of The Secret Garden (Zbigniew Preisner)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you desire a safe initial taste of Zbigniew Preisner's
film scoring career, a restrained, respectful, and beautiful expression
of intimate classical romanticism with a slightly folksy personality.
Avoid it... if you expect to hear the Linda Ronstadt song adaptation of Preisner's themes heard over the movie's end credits, the score-only album crushingly lacking this necessary and redeeming part of the soundtrack.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Secret Garden: (Zbigniew Preisner) Now
considered to be among author Frances Hodgson Burnett's most famous
novels, "The Secret Garden" has been adapted to the stage and screen
numerous times, one of which an Agnieszka Holland film released in
America in 1993 and United Kingdom the following year. While not a
resounding success immediately, The Secret Garden was well
received critically and has, over time, accrued a good standing with art
house crowds. Its story is one of childhood escapism, one that
encourages freedom of will and the healing power of friendship and the
outdoors. A young girl living with her unloving parents in India at the
turn of the 20th Century is sent to live with her uncle at a stately
manor in England when those parents are killed in an Earthquake. The
rather snotty child eventually starts to warm to the staff of the estate
and is transformed for the better in her personality when she discovered
a secret garden on the grounds of the manor. She also strikes up a
friendship with the young son of her often absent and emotionally
distraught uncle, and with the help of others against the wishes of the
lead house maid, she assists the disabled boy in escaping the confines
of his bedroom and start walking. The key to these transformations is
the magical healing power of the garden, which is the ultimate bonding
agent that eventually brings all the major characters together into a
blissful state by the end of the picture. Collaborating with the Polish
director was fellow countryman Zbigniew Preisner, who was suggested to
write the music for The Secret Garden by producer Francis Ford
Coppola. Preisner's career in film scoring, active from the mid-1980's
to the mid-2000's, remains best known for his collaboration with Polish
director Krzysztof Kieslowski and the trio of scores in the Three
Colors franchise. During that height of recognition in the early
1990's, Preisner scored The Secret Garden in between the first
two of his Three Colors assignments. While his music for The
Secret Garden was acknowledged as a tremendous asset to the film at
the time of its release, the score has continue to build upon its
positive reputation in the years that have followed, and it's not
uncommon for this work to represent the only one of Preisner's typically
romantic compositions in the average film music collection. Part of the
success of this soundtrack is attributable to the innocently beautiful
Linda Ronstadt performance of "Winter Light," the ethereal end credits
song that seamlessly combines the two best themes from Preisner's score
(those for the garden and the main boy) into a stunning resolution to
the tale.
Few scores rely upon a classically rich sense of style as much as The Secret Garden. Its refined instrumental precision suggests that a stuffy atmosphere is likely to dominate the music's personality, but Preisner balances this sound with folk rhythms and a sense of lyrical mysticism that appropriately forces the period sound to adopt a whimsical stance. The orchestral ensemble is never applied with convincing force in the score, instead dominated by extremely well enunciated chamber-like solo lines of activity in a very dry mix. The lack of depth in the ensemble is sometimes bothersome, but Preisner's intent was clearly to emphasize personal development rather than the kind of "in your face" magical representations of nature as heard in Jerry Goldsmith's Legend. That said, there are exotic elements at play in the score, most of them concentrated in "Main Title," where the Indian location is addressed with a seeming combination of acoustic guitar, harp, and sitar. The blurriness of the layered woodwind performances in this cue is remarkable even though Preisner doesn't develop any of the score's themes in this eerie opening. For the garden itself and the progress made by the main boy in the story, the composer takes the choral route, the former element afforded a handful of pretty, straight forward boys choir accompaniment in the middle of the score and the latter character represented by a solo boy's voice in two poignant cues later. The score is rich with thematic development, with four themes developed consistently and usually informing the activity of any given cue. The score's main identity is tied to the garden and logically doesn't appear until the mid-section of the work. In "Entering the Garden" and "Walking Through the Garden," Preisner establishes the idea with the deliberate simplicity of a children's carol. Further development in "Taking Colin to the Garden," "Colin Loves Mary," and "Happily Ever After" puts increasingly optimistic instrumental tones into the theme. The main girl has a theme that is eventually overtaken by the garden's theme; her individual identity is a somber, descending series of formal phrases in "Leaving the Docks," "First Time Outside," and "Shows Dickon Garden." The boy, conversely, receives a purely fluid and lovely theme that stuns with its first statement by solo voice in "Colin Opens His Eyes" and continues to impress in "Colin Senses Craven" and "Happily Ever After." The uncle's stomping theme exists in the three "Craven" cues, the score's most ominous, waltz-like expressions of stern reprimand. Together, these themes and the extremely deliberate instrumentation of The Secret Garden make the score a clear winner despite its understatement overall. Devastating to the 31-minute album is the absence of the Ronstadt end credits song, however, an absolutely necessary companion to Preisner's lovely score.
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 31:15
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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