John Corigliano: THE RED VIOLIN

Probably one of the most important and interesting North American composers of the end of the century (look at his magnificent Symphony No.1), the newyorker John Corigliano does not only maintain a tangential relationship with the film music world thanks to the work of his pupil Elliot Goldenthal, but rather he is author of three superb scores for the cinema. The oldest in time is the Oscar nominated Altered States (1980) that showed a magnificent use of the sound blocks and the orchestral textures, while the forgotten Revolution (1985) -probably the only prominent thing of so horrible movie- continued this line thru very interesting solutions. Maybe due to the failure of the Hugh Hudson film that crawled not only the Corigliano score but almost put an end to the career of its protagonist, Al Pacino, it have had to pass almost fifteen years so that Corigliano feel the desire of atttack a new project, this time of Canadian production: The Red Violin follows the history of so illustrious instrument along three centuries, being structured in five suites that correspond to so many other moments in time (the 17th century in Cremona, the 18th century in Vienna, the 19th century in Oxford, the middle of the 20th century in Shanghai and the present in Montréal) preceded by the presentation of the beautiful main theme (Anna's Theme). Corigliano uses, this time, a more tonal and lyrical language that in his previous works for the cinema, but at the same time reaches an absolute emotional and dramatic intensity; the different times are not depicted by the omnipresent violin from a historic perspective, but rather they facilitate the inclusion of diverse elements that enrich the development of the work, like it demonstrates a comparative among Death of Anna, The Monastery, The Gypsies or Journey to China. Wrapped up in a superb orchestration (that under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen at the head of the Philharmonia Orchestra becomes captivating), the solo violin of Joshua Bell together with certain color touches (the voice of Alexys Schwartz or the cimbalon of Eddie Heisson) it works as the soloist voice and soul of this touching score. As colophon, and although intimately related, we find The Red Violin: Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra, an independent work of almost eighteen minutes generated on some of the film themes and that it even was premiered before the filming of the movie concludes.
Note that The Red Violin has conquered to John Corigliano the Genie Award of the Canada Academy of Cinema to the best score in 1998. M.A.F.

/ SONY CLASSICAL SK63010 / 66'


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