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"Masters and Commanders," "Magma," New CDs from Kunzel and Järvi

Mary Ellyn Hutton
Posted: Sep 20, 2007 - 12:00:00 AM in reviews_2007
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A couple of outstanding new CDs evoke land and sea.
Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops' salt-sprayed "Masters and Commanders" celebrates music of sailing ships and the sea.
Percussionist Evelyn Glennie with Paavo Järvi and the Estonian National Orchestra bring something earthier to mind with Erkki-Sven Tüür's aptly named "Magma."

  •  Erich Kunzel: Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. “Masters and Commanders: Music from Seafaring Film Classics.” Telarc.
   Kunzel is at his swashbuckling best on this sampler from nautical films, most of which are also piratical in tune with today’s buccaneer craze.
   You can hear heart-thumping classics by the giants among film composers, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Overture to “Captain Blood,” Suite from “The Sea Hawk”),  Franz Waxman (Suite from “Captains Courageous”), Elmer Bernstein (Prelude and “Out to Sea” from “The Buccaneer”), Alfred Newman (“Conquest” from “Captain from Castile”) and Miklos Rozsa (“The Mayflower” from “The Plymouth Adventure” which quotes the Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts”).
   There are newer scores from the famously successful “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, “The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003, music by Klaus Badelt) and “Dean Man’s Chest” (2006, Hans Zimmer) and the 1995 flop “Cutthroat Island” (John Debney).  Zimmer’s “Jack Sparrow” features a wry cello solo by the Pops’ Eri Kim.  Concertmaster Timothy Lees shines in “Los Manolos” from Boccherini’s 1780 “Night Music from the Streets of Madrid,” arranged for “Master and Commander” (2003) whose protagonist Admiral Jack Aubrey (played by Russell Crowe) literally fiddles aboard ship.
   Henry Mancini is represented by “Arctic Whale Hunt” from “The White Dawn,” Morton Gould by the wave-tossed main title from “The Windjammer.”  CD and SACD formats.
  • Paavo Järvi: Estonian National Orchestra. Tüür, “Magma” Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. Evelyn Glennie. Virgin Classics.
   Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür is a name not unknown to Cincinnati audiences, Järvi having programmed his music several times since becoming CSO music director in 2001.  This release featuring famed Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie bids to put tiny Estonia on the musical map like nothing since Arvo Pärt.  However, the similarity ends there unless one considers Part’s early output which, unlike his later “mystical minimalism,” was brashly modernist and experimental.
   “Magma” is a fitting title for this 2002 symphony with percussion, which begins with noisy eruptions followed by what could be steam hissing from an abyss (compare Tüür’s “Zeitraum,” heard on CSO concerts last spring).  No program is intended, however.  Hear what you wish.  It could be bird calls, showers of blossoms or forest murmurs in neon.  Tüür is a neo-modernist who meticulously crafts his music with lines, harmonies and instrumental colors mixed, matched and manipulated for specific impact.
   The two halves are separated by a sizzling cadenza, where Glennie sounds like an army of players.  In the first half (Andante furioso) metallic percussion and woodwinds yield to rock drums and brass.  The second begins as a kind of slow movement featuring wood percussion and strings followed by congas, animated rhythms and a final fadeout.
   Paired with “Magma” are Tüür’s 1992 “Inquietude du fini” for chamber choir and orchestra, a searing work with “speech song” and aching imagery of a dying world; the solemn “Igavik” (“Eternity”) for male choir and orchestra in memory of Estonian president Lennart Meri who died in 2006; and “The Path and the Traces” for strings, dedicated to and somewhat reminiscent of Pärt.