Heroes & Legends at Colston Hall in Bristol - Concert Review
Posted on: 2017-03-13
Our rating:
An impressive range of some of movie music's most consummate composers had their work faultlessly interpreted by the ensemble, including the likes of Hans Zimmer, James Horner, Maurice Jarre, Basil Poledouris and, of course, John Williams.
How often is it you can say you spent your Friday night in the company of Conan the Barbarian, Abraham Lincoln, Doctor Zhivago, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones? Well, I did - musically, at any rate - when the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra unleashed their mighty symphonic genius for their Heroes & Legends concert at Bristol's Colston Hall on Friday 10 March 2017.
When it comes to performing film music, the BSO have got seriously arse-kicking previous. The venue's resident orchestra - incidentally voted the world's favourite - has a long and estimable history of putting on hugely popular concerts showcasing some of the finest, most iconic and influential music from the silver screen. Friday's gig, played to an energized, excitable packed house, added yet another exemplary feather in their fine filmic cap.
Williams' Summon the Heroes, written for the 1996 Summer Olympics, got proceedings off to a rousing, spirited start, alternating between graceful trumpet solos to all-out kettle-drum thrashing, cymbal-crashing bombast. An excerpt from Zimmer's The Da Vinci Code was a masterclass in minimal tension building culminating in a triumphant resolution, while Tan Dun's The Eternal Vow from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a sublime mix of exotic percussion, plaintive cello and orchestra.
Portions from the Sean Connery/Audrey Hepburn-starring Robin and Marion could only have come from the consummate composing quill of John Barry, after which toes were dipped once again into Zimmer territory with a thrilling section from King Arthur.
Only a handful of themes can proudly claim to be instantly recognisable and Lara's Theme from Dr Zhivago, composed by Maurice Jarre, is irrefutably one of them, it's nostalgically lilting waltz evoking memories of David Lean's sweeping epic. With serious symphonic composers increasingly turning their hand to video games, a few portions of the evening were dedicated to music written for those with a proclivity for Playstations and X-Boxes, with Bristol-based composer Tess Tyler's solid effort for Lego Marvel's Avengers providing all the full-blooded guts, glory and heroism you'd expect.
A lone clarinet gave way to sweeping strings and a beautiful, yearning trumpet solo for John Williams' The People's House from his score to Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, after which the same maestro's much more soaring, giddyingly effervescent Return to Neverland from Hook brought the first half to a lyrically joyous close.
Twenty minutes and one Magnum ice-cream later, the members of the BSO re-emerged to take their seats for part deux, with Miklos Rozxa's Overture and Love Theme from the Charlton Heston-starring 1961 historical epic, El Cid, kicking things off with a brutal, snare-drum driven fanfare introduction before segueing into the string-led lush, impassioned love theme itself.
Williams' Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone drew mild gasps of recognition and excitement from the younger members of the audience, played impeccably by the orchestra and demonstrating again how Williams is absolutely unbeatable when it comes to creating themes and musical motifs which are impossible to separate in your mind's ear from the movie for which he's writing.
An extended suite from James Horner's score for Troy - actually a last minute replacement when the filmmakers decided they didn't like the original composition by Gabriel Yared, giving Horner a mere three weeks to write nearly two hours of music - was a deftly manipulated contrast of impassioned, melodic string writing and brass-heavy heraldic pageantry and bombast.
Randy Edelman's stirring theme from Dragonheart preceded Ramin Djawadi's cello-led intro theme from the phenomenon that is Game of Thrones, before attention was turned once again to the world of video games with British composer Stephen Barton's epic composition for Titanfall 2 making a gutsy, bellicose mark and a brassy, gutteral sound world at times reminiscent of other film composer Elliot Goldenthal.
There were echoes of Khachaturian in Basil Poledouris' appropriately adrenaline-pumping, muscular music for the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring sword and sorcery epic, Conan the Barbarian, while Williams' musical magnificence returned one final time for a perfect iteration of the theme for celluloid's greatest whip-cracking archaeologist hero, Indiana Jones, with the Raiders March.
From the enthusiastic claps and cheers and demands for an encore, it was pretty evident we were going to get treated to one more piece to finish the night off - and that came in the form of a rather funky, jazzed up version of Elmer Bernstein's legendary theme from the classic western, The Magnificent Seven.
To me, the BSO is like the orchestral equivalent of a fine wine or vintage cheese: they just get better with age. Conductor and Bristol boy Pete Harrison - a veteran of these film music concerts and always an infectiously perky presence, often introducing a piece with some interesting filmic titbits - was confident and assured at the helm, presiding over the orchestra for performances that were frequently so spot-on in terms of tempo and dynamics you'd have thought you were listening to the original soundtrack recordings. (I'm a shameless film music nerd so I know these things.)
Another cracking concert that refreshingly mixed crowdpleasing favourites with marvelous lesser-known works, it went down an absolute storm and was as memorable and legendary as the heroic, epoch-defining titans the programme was celebrating. Absolute perfection.
5/5
Article by:
Jamie is a writer, blogger, journalist, critic, film fan, soundtrack nerd and all-round Bristolian good egg. He loves the music of Philip Glass, the art of Salvador Dali, the writings of Charles Bukowksi and Hunter S Thompson, the irreverence of Harry Hill, and the timeless, straw-chomping exuberance of The Wurzels. You can sometimes find him railing against a surging tide of passing cyclists, or gorging himself senseless on the Oriental delights of a Cosmos all-you-can-eat buffet.
