I don't understand composer Hans Zimmer's angers when someone makes mention of the Zimmer Factory. The fact that a handful of rock and pop musicians has united, forming some kind of a medieval order, it should not cause resentments neither angers; after all, what is bad in it?. I do understand that each member of this sort of private sect wants to be respected as a composer of own resources and of genuine ideas, but why then they are determined to create a music resolved with the same technical and artistic resources that those of his partner?. There are people that says to be able to distinguish among Nick Glennie-Smith and Trevor Rabin, or Gavin Greenaway and Mark Mancina; I find it difficult, at least. The style that mediates among them is identical, and although each one develops his own melodies and ideas, these are always based in a aesthetic foundational code, I would dare to say, associated to that popular elechtro-symphonic sound, to the same performers and the same material and human team.Although I doesn't agree, in general, with this people's musical philosophy, there are certain works that wake up my interest and, what is more, my sympathy. Endurance is a happy sample of this corporatist expression, carried out in this case by the terrible John Powell that already made his first steps with the blasphemous Face/Off (1997). Powell offers here an exultant tapestry of colors and Ethiopians flavors, always abusing of some elements that made notice of the Zimmer's score for The Lion King (1994), and though generally the music is well built and in good measure responds to the moving tone of the film, which narrates the life of the Ethiopian champion Haile Gebreselassie, those details weigh like a flagstone and waste the author's evident inspiration linking this work unavoidably with the tradition of the Zimmer Factory. The most notorious case is the development of the longest piece in the disk, The Great Race, that not only evokes The Lion King, but dozens of scores unaware to the African topic, all them bounded, of course, to the canons of the zimmerian school. But in spite of it the disk can be enjoyed and tasted, thanks to almost brilliant moments as Chasing The Bull, worthy of a master for its rhythmic, melodic and instrumental elaboration (with an unpayable duet between the trumpet and the krar, a Ethiopian string instrument). In the excellent recording, that joins songs and traditional themes, had collaborated multiple singers, composers and Ethiopian performers, and members (fifty nine) of the London Symphony Orchestra. D.R.C.
