Prom 34: 'Reel Change', London Contemporary Orchestra, Ames

[bluestateprommer]

Wednesday 14 August 2024
19:30
Royal Albert Hall

Selections from the following film soundtracks (all first performances at The Proms):

The Echo Society: Postcard from Earth
(a) 'Storms'
(b) 'The Seed'

Bryce Dessner: Sing Sing
(a) 'Lysander'
(b) 'Sing Sing'
(c) 'Seven Years of Curtain Calls'
(d) 'The Gate'

Anna Meredith: The End We Start From
(a) 'Bathing'
(b) 'Waterfall'
(c) 'Little World'
(d) 'Return'

Son Lux: Everything Everywhere All at Once
(a) 'Deirdre Fight'
(b) 'It All Just Goes Away'
(c) 'In Another Life'
(d) 'Specks of Time'

Tamar-kali: Shirley - 'Emissary Captive Queen'

Colin Stetson: The Menu
(a) 'The Boat'
(b) 'Amuse Bouche'

Herdis Stefansdottir: Knock at the Cabin
(a) 'Opening Credits'
(b) 'Breaking In'
(c) 'But You Will'
(d) 'Sacrifice & Departure'

Isobel Waller-Bridge: The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse
(a) 'How Fast Can You Run'
(b) 'Home'
(c) 'Flying'

Volker Bertelmann: All Quiet on the Western Front
(a) 'Tanks'
(b) 'Remains'
(c) 'Uniform'
(d) 'Comrades'
(e) 'Tjaden'
(f) 'Making Sense of War'
(g) 'Last Combat'

Hildur Guðnadóttir: Tár - 'For Petra'

Jung Jae Il: Squid Game
(a) 'Round I'
(b) 'Way Back Then'
(c) 'I Remember My Name'
(d) 'Round VI'
(e) 'Unfolded''

Jed Kurzel: Monkey Man
(a) 'Cut Open'
(b) 'Dreams'
(c) 'Hanuman'
(d) 'Home'
(e) 'Rana'
(f) 'Monkey Man'

Max Richter: On the Nature of Daylight

Jerskin Fendrix: Poor Things
(a) 'Bella'
(b) 'I Just Hope She's Alright'
(c) 'Finale'


London Contemporary Orchestra
Robert Ames, conductor

Edith Bowman, stage presenter

https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/erx84f

https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/proms/bbc-proms-24/prom-34/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021pyk

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002202j

[edashtav]

I overheard one selection whilst dining:

Volker Bertelmann: All Quiet on the Western Front
(a) 'Tanks'
(b) 'Remains'
(c) 'Uniform'
(d) 'Comrades'
(e) 'Tjaden'
(f) 'Making Sense of War'
(g) 'Last Combat'

Frugal fare!

The live RAH is audience thought it was manna from heaven.

[smittims]

Yes, Film music is clearly a world apart. Those who love it for various reasons (maybe because the music plays while their favourite actor is on screen in a favourite moment) will call it 'great' and demand that its stature be acknowledged alongside Mozart and Beethoven. Those who listen to it purely as music in its own right tend to find something missing.

One of the problems is that it's always there to support a visual image, rather than to stand alone as music. It therefore tends at best to be pastiche ( yes,even John Williams if you listen carefully) or at worst kitsch. I though that this morning when listening to the extract from the score to Amelie, a film I haven't seen and , from what I've seen and heard of it, wouldn't want to see. It was a short pianopiece, jammed between two more distinguished works on 'Through the Night'. The melody was feeble and banal, the accompanimental figuration knock-kneed and lame in its lack of imagination. But those who love the film would probably say 'that's a great song.'

It's no accident. I think,that the best and most enduring film music is written by composers who are also good at writing stand-alone music (Walton, Vaughan Williams, Prokofiev,etc.)

[oliver sudden]

pastiche ( yes,even John Williams if you listen carefully)

I’m not sure you need to listen _that_ carefully to hear the pastiche in John Williams

(Although you do I suppose need to have listened carefully at some stage to the right bits of Korngold/Holst/Prokofiev. On the upside, that does mean that the ones who don’t recognise it don’t mind, while the ones who do can pat ourselves on the back for doing so.)

[Serial_Apologist]

It is no surprise that more adventurous, modernist film scores, such as Auric's to Buñuel's Le sang d'un poète, or the atonal music Henze composed for a crime caper set in one of the northern French ports in the early 1970s, never get featured at this now-annual event.

[smittims]

Nor Schoenberg's Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, which, with a forlorn hope , he expected someone to make a film to fit it, ratther than the other way round. There is an anecdote that he was asked to write for films while living in Los Angeles, but his insistence that his music be played complete put paid (or rather unpaid) to the offer!

[Serial_Apologist]

Nor Schoenberg's Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, which, with a forlorn hope , he expected someone to make a film to fit it, ratther than the other way round. There is an anecdote that he was asked to write for films while living in Los Angeles, but his insistence that his music be played complete put paid (or rather unpaid) to the offer!

It was only a piece lasting about 10 minutes! Another story was that young American composers impressed by it who wanted to go and study with Schoenberg to learn about his "effects" were miffed to be set exercises in counterpoint and variation forms!

[oliver sudden]

I presumably mentioned that I had recently made the acquaintance of Vaughan Williams’ complete music for Scott of the Antarctic. Mostly written at astonishing speed before the film was shot, and if I understand correctly some of the film was edited to fit the music rather than the other way around. I heartily recommend the Dutton CD, which for me exists in an extremely interesting relationship with the Sinfonia Antartica while standing firmly on its own two feet as a listening experience.

Has that appeared in this sort of context at the Proms, he said in a feeble attempt to seem on-topic?