United Kingdom Ennio Morricone and 100 Years of Cinema: Madrid Philharmonic Orchestra / Fernando Furones (conductor), Barbican Hall, London, 16.2.2025. (MBr)
One cannot really argue with the fact that film music sells seats – this concert, the first of two being given on the same day by the Madrid Philharmonic Orchestra, was full to the rafters. Never mind that the subject of the concert, Ennio Morricone, an Italian, being played by a Spanish orchestra, found himself with just seven of the nineteen film scores which we heard – and which also fell some years short of a century (‘a 100 Years of Cinema’) by my reckoning.
This was a long concert – at 90 minutes – though the conductor, Fernando Furones, as genial as one could wish for, wasted no time between pieces in keeping things moving. You would have had to have been something of a film buff to have recognised every film music excerpt, especially with no programme notes (except a digital one) – and even then you would have had to know considerably more about the music since not everything you were listening to was exactly familiar. It would have been welcome if the program notes we did have mentioned something about arrangements for these works, for example. Max Steiner’s overture to Gone with the Wind (which opened the concert) was both familiar and unfamiliar – but it absolutely lacked the broad sweep and epic grandeur one associates with that 1939 film. Likewise, the excerpt from Miklós Rósza’s Ben Hur (1959) felt similarly underwhelming, even if the brass of the Madrid Philharmonic tried to convince us otherwise.
Morricone’s own scores were often sublimely done. Once Upon a Time in the West (famously composed before the film was made), with its leitmotifs emanating from within the orchestra, each instrument inhabiting a particular actor (or vice versa), For a Few Dollars More, which blends diegetic elements into the score (no pocket watch here, however). Both were exquisite. His collaboration with Brian de Palma on The Untouchables in 1987 brought out a superb performance from the orchestra – not a score I have ever personally warmed to, but it almost persuaded me I should like it more.
Yet, set Morricone beside another Italian, Nino Rota, and his controversial masterpiece of a score for The Godfather and we have a different kind of composer altogether. I am not sure the Madrid Philharmonic did justice to the more classical proportions of Rota’s grotesque Waltzing, nor the proto-Sibelian landscape you sometimes hear in this music – not that the arrangement was classic Rota either. Steiner’s Casablanca faired poorly, too.
John Williams’s theme to Schindler’s List lends almost all its emotional outpouring to a solo violin (and in relief a solo cello) in music that within a relatively short timespan needs to somehow come from the soul. Anne-Sophie Mutter gave an astonishing performance of this piece just last year and this is the third I have heard since. It is just not enough to play the notes as we got here, underlining the complexity of Williams’s film music in general that what you hear and what you would like are never quite the same thing.
Having said that, of the three works that tail ended this concert – all virtuoso, dramatic pieces – it was Williams’s theme from Star Wars which perhaps made the most compelling case for this orchestra, and it was perhaps the best played work of the entire afternoon. It takes some chutzpah for any orchestra to come to the home of the orchestra which recorded this masterpiece of cinema (the London Symphony Orchestra) and, if not quite match them, then run them close. Horns were magnificent, as were the timpani (as they had been all afternoon, in fact). Sometimes you are never quite aware of Holst or Prokofiev or Stravinsky in this music – but it seemed oddly tangential here; so raucous was the playing at times there were hints of a Planets or a Rite of Spring braying in the background. Even string tone marginally improved. Unsurprisingly, it raised the roof.
I have been necessarily selective here – in a concert that was long and often of variable quality. As I left the couple next me were shouting wildly for an encore – if they got one I couldn’t say. But as with most film concerts, I found this one hugely enjoyable.
Marc Bridle
Film music played included:
Max Steiner – Gone with the Wind
Ennio Morricone – The Untouchables
Miklós Rósza – Ben Hur
John Williams – Jurassic Park
Ennio Morricone – For a Few Dollars More
John Barry – Out of Africa
Ennio Morricone – Once Upon a Time in America
James Horner – Titanic
Ennio Morricone – 1900
Ennio Morricone – Cinema Paradiso
Nino Rota – The Godfather
Ennio Morricone – Once Upon a Time in the West
Max Steiner – Casablanca
John Williams – Schindler’s List
Ennio Morricone – The Mission
Basil Poledouris – Conan the Barbarian
Hans Zimmer – Gladiator
Howard Shore – The Lord of the Rings
John Williams – Star Wars