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Composed by
JAMES NEWTON HOWARD

Rating
* * * *

Album running time
45:38

Performed by
THE HOLLYWOOD STUDIO SYMPHONY
led by
ENDRE GRANAT
conducted by
PETE ANTHONY
MIKE NOWAK

Orchestrations
PETE ANTHONY
JEFF ATMAJIAN
BRAD DECHTER
JOHN KULL
JAMES NEWTON HOWARD

Engineered by
SHAWN MURPHY
Music Editor
JIM WEIDMAN
Produced by
JAMES NEWTON HOWARD
JIM WEIDMAN

Released by
HOLLYWOOD RECORDS
Serial number
 5050467-2749-2-1

Artwork copyright (c) 2004 Touchstone Pictures; review copyright (c) 2004 James Southall

 

HIDALGO

Lovely eastern western

A review by JAMES SOUTHALL

Despite becoming ever-higher on Hollywood's list of favourite composers, James Newton Howard's finest work was roughly a decade ago with two outstanding scores in quick succession, Wyatt Earp and Waterworld, and fans have been waiting a long time for him to return to the same sort of epic territory.  Well, the wait is over now, with Hidalgo, a slightly ridiculous film starring Viggo Mortensen about a horse race across Arabia in the late nineteenth century, apparently based on a true story (and Touchstone Pictures has also just issued a press release confirming that Father Christmas is real after all).  Director Joe Johnston has often made particularly prescient choices of composer for his movies, from James Horner on The Rocketeer through Mark Isham on October Sky, and this is no exception.  Mortensen is clearly not quite the star the studio hoped he might be, and he's no Peter O'Toole, but Johnston was obviously going for a David Lean / Lawrence of Arabia feel to the movie, which extends, at least a little, to the score, which plays for the most part like an expansive western score with westernised Arab ethnic hints thrown in along the way.

The music is very attractive and impressive.  While it lacks a memorable theme, Howard makes up for it with sheer energy and excitement in many tracks and outright beauty in the other ones, sometimes favouring long-lined string melodies, sometimes old-fashioned orchestral action music.  "The Race Begins", while brief, is an excellent example of the action music; it could easily come from Wyatt Earp.  "The Second Half" is a gorgeous piece with Lawrence-ish chord progressions which could hardly sound more grand and dignified without being especially imposing or portentous.  While much of the music is quite bright and colourful, there are elements of darkness too, particularly with the desperate "Sandstorm", a fine piece of action scoring.  "Katib" is a lovely, flavoursome piece, uplifting and evocative of a beautiful sunset.  One of the more impressive cues is the longest, the truly inspiringly-named "Montage", which includes - as all scores seem to at the moment - a wailing, Middle Eastern vocal, this time performed by Hovig Krikorian.  Clichéd it may be, but it's also good to listen to and doesn't seem as out of place in this score as it does in almost all the others.  

The last few cues are especially good.  "The Trap" is a frantic, pulsating action piece, the best thing Howard's written in years.  The pace diminishes in "The Last Push", but the quality doesn't, with the composer bringing in some more fine writing for strings, this time with a lovely trumpet solo accompanying.  "The Final Three" is a bright, breezy, exciting action cue which demonstrates Howard at his very best, using all the techniques he's developed over the years.  Finally, there's the predictably-rousing climax "Let 'Er Buck" (?) which is a nice way to round the album off.  Hidalgo is certainly a return to form for the composer - which has been a long time coming - and sees him writing in a far more fluid way than usual, ditching the mickey-mousing which makes so many of his scores so frustrating.  OK, so it's hardly Lawrence of Arabia or even The Mummy, but it's a solid blockbuster score and goes down as an early highlight of the year.

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Tracks

  1. Main Title (3:14)
  2. Don't Waste Our Money (2:08)
  3. Arriving in the Desert (2:54)
  4. Morning of the Race (2:53)
  5. The Race Begins (1:58)
  6. The Second Half (2:23)
  7. Sandstorm (1:53)
  8. Frank Pushes On (1:54)
  9. Katib (2:18)
  10. Montage (6:52)
  11. The Trap (3:17)
  12. The Last Push (3:08)
  13. The Final Three (5:16)
  14. Let 'Er Buck (4:53)