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Review of Hans Zimmer: The Wings of a Film (Compilation)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you seek an interesting, but not entirely functional collection of
live performances of Hans Zimmer's works up to 2000.
Avoid it... if you expect to hear a well rounded presentation of all of Zimmer's famous efforts, because significant entries were left off of this compilation album.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Hans Zimmer: The Wings of a Film: (Hans Zimmer) Some of the most
popular concert tickets at symphony houses in the 1990's had been those for
performances of film music conducted by two giants of the genre: John Williams and
Jerry Goldsmith. Those veteran composers conducted their works for packed houses and
were equally versed in how entertain an audience with anecdotes and flair. The idea of
Hans Zimmer putting on a concert production of his own work was an idea met with both
great anticipation and curiosity when it was announced in early 2000 that he would do
just that. The composer and his music had several things working against him that
needed to be addressed. First, his scores prior to that time were often massive
collaborations of electronics and solo talent that were worked and reworked several
hundred times before the final versions were sent to the studios. Because of his habit
of endless tweaking, Zimmer is not the kind of composer who can sit down at any public
piano by whim and perform the best of his works in easily recognizable fashion. He
also, unlike many other composers, does not arrange his own scores in such a way that
lends them well to concert suites. Unlike Williams and James Horner, he did not make a
habit of writing a suite for each album or for future concert performances, and unlike
Goldsmith, his scores were not easily repackaged into neat, 5-minute end-credit style
suites. More inclined was (and still is) Zimmer to rearrange and remix his scores into
unique 50+ minutes suites for his albums, so for him to arrange a 5 to 7 minute
sampling from each of his scores for a concert event was unheard of. Also working
against him was the fact that his musical styles vary extremely from one score to the
next, forcing the prospect of a concert into a very diverse sampling of many different
musical genres. The last complication of a Zimmer concert is the simple fact that he
had never described himself as a public performer (though nerves can usually be
overcome with time, and he had certainly conquered his by the time he received rock
star status for The Dark Knight later in the decade). Whereas you might catch
Williams, Horner, or Patrick Doyle stopping at a public piano to grace the surrounding
masses with a few minutes of a thematic idea, Zimmer was a studio hermit who
manipulated his basic keyboarding into the scores we hear, with weeks of hacking
through those ideas in between.
Instead of performing anything more than the electronic keyboards for his own scores, Zimmer prefers to surround himself with immense talent (although some detractors of his Media Ventures empire used that point against him) and utilized guitar, trombone, trumpet, clarinet, vocal, or some other solo performance to accent his keyboarding and somewhat basic orchestral accompaniment. Add to this sticky concert situation the additional fact that Zimmer does not conduct the orchestras which perform his works and, in sum, you have to wonder why Zimmer would ever agree to a concert such as the one presented on this album, "The Wings of a Film." By his own admission, he agreed to do it in a moment of spontaneous thought, and, in the end, it turned out relatively well. Zimmer handled his stage fright by acting like more of a coordinator rather than a performer. His contributions via solo instrument exist only a couple of times, and they are short in duration. Any yet, since he is a coordinator as well as a composer, it only serves logic that he would convene all the same contributing talent to the concert stage and put on a sort of Media Ventures collaborative spectacle. From a marketing standpoint, a concert can often be considered a success if a popular album follows it, and, for Zimmer, one did. In this case, the concert took place at the Flanders International Film Festival at Ghent in October 2000, and the subsequent album of some of the recordings from that concert were made available by Decca/Universal (Zimmer's label of choice since the Gladiator phenomenon) in June 2001. Interestingly, as concert recordings go, this one is pretty average in sound quality. The audience, whose applause begins and ends each track, managed to keep control of itself during the performances (with the exception of Power of One), and the album's engineers have managed to edit out all of the sounds of knocking instruments, screaming children, coughing idiots, etc (unlike some pop concert albums that go largely unedited, with the echoes of bizarre choking noises coming from the rear of the crowd). On the other hand, since the performance was realized in a confined space, the album doesn't feature the "warehouse" effect of expansive ambience that some people enjoy on the concert albums of Williams' works, among others. By contrast, "The Wings of a Film" has almost an intimate, clubby feel to it. This sound is appropriate to Zimmer's inherent style, for his scores can often benefit from some additional reverb in their original forms anyway. The performances themselves are an interesting case to figure as well. Because Zimmer's professional work is realized after much tinkering in his caves of electronic soundstages, some of the performances here sound like raw versions of those compositions, relying heavily on the solo performances of Zimmer's associates to alone carry the mass of the volume. The orchestrations will sound different, because they are being performed by the adequate, though unimpressive VRO Flemish Radio Orchestra, but if you listen to the originals again, you will notice that the underlying compositions actually have not been changed significantly (beyond the occasional performance error that happens at nearly any live event). As for the individual performances, there are only twelve selections offered on this album, so they're easy to summarize. The album begins with the highlight of the concert, Lisa Gerrard's performance of the "Now We Are Free" hit finale track from Gladiator. Interestingly, since her voice was dubbed in multiple layers for the original performance, and since she only had one backup voice for the concert, you hear a much clearer idea of her talents in this piece. The electronics have been pulled back, the full chorus is cleaner, and Gerrard's voice is allowed more of the total volume. That voice is especially magnificent in this clarity, and it's easy to wish that the injection cue from Mission: Impossible 2 had been chosen for inclusion in this concert as well (even if only to get Gerrard more involved in the concert). Others have argued that the integrity of the original "Now We Are Free" version was compromised beyond an enjoyable level by Gerrard's more singular performance of that "non-language." The second Gladiator track ("Am I Not Merciful?") was underplayed and unnecessary; Zimmer would have been better off making a concert suite out of the last three combined tracks of the original Gladiator album, highlighting the title theme with the chorus at his disposal. The Driving Miss Daisy driving sequence is a playful opportunity to let the clarinet take center stage, and allowed Zimmer one of two chances to perform on the piano himself. Like the Nine Months suite, it offered a more orchestral selection to break up the electronic keyboarding of The Thin Red Line and Rain Man, which (especially the former) were too extended and bordering on mundane compared to the exuberance of the rest of the album. The "Nyah and Ethan" love theme from Mission: Impossible 2 is well performed by Heitor Pereira on guitar and is a highlight of the show. True Romance and Thelma and Louise present an interesting look at Zimmer's zanier side. The African-related selections, with Lebo M being the most prominent aspect of them, are the weakest part of the show. Power of One and The Lion King (which actually consists of two selections from the sequel album, "Rhythm of the Pride Lands") would have been enjoyable to hear in person, but add little of interest to the album. The problem with both the album and concert was Zimmer's selection of cues to present. Some of the material existing in the concert, such as the theme from Crimson Tide, was omitted from the album. It is obvious that he was trying to take cross sections from every corner of his career and meld them into a diverse concert that was meant to be fun rather than professional (the latter of which, in a classical sense, is what Williams and Goldsmith would prefer). However, four scores that should have been considered further for this concert and album would have been Toys, which has some great choral sequences not contained on the original album, Backdraft, which had already become the hot title music for a popular international cooking show, The Preacher's Wife, which would likely have inspired the audience to sing along like none other, and The Prince of Egpyt, which remains a very popular effort in the composer's career. To accommodate those selections, the performances of The Thin Red Line and Nine Months should have been removed and the remaining cues shortened. As Goldsmith does, many similar scores can be combined into suites for concerts, bleeding into each other after a minute or so in each entry. Zimmer, being the master mixer, might enjoy such a task. It was thought that perhaps, with the success of this concert, Zimmer would consider producing such a collection of special suites of his works for albums or concerts on a more regular basis, though that has not happened with the frequency that many of his fans had hoped. Overall, "The Wings of a Film" is a very interesting listening experience (especially for those collectors of his works), but Zimmer still needed to work out a few kinks before he could produce blockbuster concerts like those of the existing masters. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 71:43
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes extensive credits and quotes from many of Zimmer's
associates from prior projects.
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