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 Post subject: "The Rise Of The Roman...
PostPosted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 12:09 am 
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Joined: Sat Nov 19, 2005 3:48 pm
Posts: 2773
10/13/11

The Rise Of The Roman Empire! The Fall of it! Whatever. Producer James Fitzpatrick nails it down, sets it ablaze, then stomps on the ashes! Here's the Tiomkin recording to beat.

Much has been said about Tiomkin's favorite musical devices, the abundance of notes, the colorful orchestrations, the sheer volume of music. So true, so true, so true. But MY favorite device is his incredibly complex harmonic vocabulary.

Not to be confused with atonality and dissonance, areas Tiomkin rarely dwelled upon, I speak of his non-stop, rapid-fire machine gun-paced change of chords within his cues. Relying mostly on tried and true major and minor chords, Tiomkin uniquely raced through an abundance of those chords within mere beats, often moving around chromatically from one harmony to another with the same ferocity Jerry Goldsmith applied rhythms to action music. No small feat! But enough of harmony. Let's visit THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE as in this brand new Prometheus 2-CD set. And once you visit it, you'll be back. I've been there twice now, all two plus hours of it, and after a brief respite I'll go visit it again.

Yes, it's that good. This is surely one of the best re-recordings I've heard. Being such an ambitious score only adds to the good vibes!

What Fitzpatrick's crew does is capture the sheer energy of this weighted score, finding all the right colors again and again. Here an imposing solo organ, there a tender violin line, here a flutter-tongue trumpet figure, there a sturdy unison cello section... and before you know it, all the sweep and majesty of a full-blooded procession through Rome, right there in your living room, or your car, or your earbuds or whatever. However you carry sound from the CD player to your ear, Nic Raine conducts it, the City of Prague musicians play it, Prometheus presents it... and you're the beneficiary.

Hail Commodus! Hail Caesar! Maybe even hail Livius if you desire! But mostly, all hail Dimitri Tiomkin and his score of a lifetime!


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