Movie Wave Home
Composed by
Rating
Album running time
Performed by
Orchestrations
Engineered by
Released by
Artwork copyright (c) 1990 Pathe Entertainment Co.; review copyright (c)
2004 James Southall
|
THE RUSSIA HOUSE Laid
back, pleasant jazz A review by JAMES SOUTHALL Jerry Goldsmith commenced important relationships with two
directors in 1990. While his collaborations with Paul Verhoeven are often
(rightly) cited for their quality, his music for Fred Schepisi is frequently
ignored by even the composer's fans. This is very unfortunate because,
while the scores are certainly not "big", the director provided the
composer with essentially a blank canvas on which to paint (he does not use temp
tracks) and provided him with two of the best, most intelligent films he scored
during the decade in The Russia House and Six Degrees of Separation. The Russia House is not the sort of score that leaps
out and grabs your attention, it's the sort that crawls from beneath and you can
easily miss its qualities. For the tale of cold war spying starring Sean
Connery, based on John le Carre's novel, Goldsmith took the unusual decision to
go with a very jazzy, moody, sexy score somewhat in the mould of something like
John Barry's Body Heat, but without the burning sexuality. The main
theme - allegedly first written for Oliver Stone's Wall Street, and then
certainly used in Alien Nation, two scores that didn't end up being used
in their films - is superb, an attractive melody given a moody performance by
Branford Marsalis, accompanied by Mike Lang's piano. It's a very different
beast here than the romantic all-strings arrangement Goldsmith performs in
concerts. "Introductions" brings in the second main theme, a
subtle little piece for bass which functions nicely both as a suspense motif and
a binding gel between different sections of the score. Finally comes a
swifter, pacier theme in "The Conversation", which also features a few
touches echoing the movie's locale. The great theme is reprised to fine
effect in "The Meeting", a piece full of espionage intrigue.
There is also a vocal version of the main theme, with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn
Bergman, "Alone in the World", sung by Patti Austin, which is actually
very good. The Russia House makes for a pleasant listen, fairly
undemanding, but quite rewarding. It's a surprisingly long album - one of
the longest Goldsmith albums to have been put out at that point - and seems an
odd score for such extended treatment on CD. It's unbelievably ironic that
a score like this would get an hour-long CD when considerably more complex and
varied works were lucky to get 35 minutes at the same time. In any case,
the CD is recommended for the lighter side of Goldsmith. Buy
this CD from amazon.com by clicking here! Tracks
|