A Cinematic Suite. Quintessence Saxophone Quintet (Uli Lettermann, soprano saxophone; Jonas Buschsieweke, alto saxophone; Roland Danyi and Thorsten Floth, tenor saxophones; Anatole Gomersall, baritone saxophone). Paschen Records. $20.99.
The importance of music to the moviegoing experience tends to be underestimated. Film is a visual medium, to be sure, but the extent to which music underlines, expands, comments upon and enhances what is seen on screen can be highly significant. And some great or near-great composers have been well aware of this: Shostakovich, Prokofiev, even Saint-Saëns (in 1908!). Classically trained composers have had significant impact on the film world even if their concert-hall works have largely fallen into obscurity: Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Miklós Rózsa, Dimitri Tiomkin. And a few names crop up consistently with regard to “great film music,” whether or not the music itself can be described as “great” (an arguable adjective in any case): John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein, Max Steiner.
Because movies are mostly a popular medium rather than an esoteric one, much successful film music is rather forgettable, serving its esthetic purpose without calling on filmgoers’ emotions or intellects in more than a superficial way. However, because of its comparative harmonic simplicity and accessibility, movie music can be an interesting jumping-off point for creation of more-elaborate material designed to reach out well beyond the purposes for which the music was originally intended. And that brings us to A Cinematic Suite, a very clever and essentially through-composed compilation of film music arranged into a 10-movement, 51-minute sequence for saxophone quintet that can be heard simply as music or listened to as its own quasi-cinematic creation by following the “screenplay” that is nicely outlined in the accompanying booklet.
The whole project is unusual, even strange, but very intriguing to hear – the playing is excellent throughout – and genuinely involving purely as music. It helps, of course, if listeners know the underlying material that has been arranged, transcribed, expanded and otherwise modified by two members of the Quintessence Saxophone Quintet, Uli Lettermann (responsible for six of the tracks) and Anatole Gomersall (the remaining four). It is a fair assumption that most potential audiences for this Paschen Records release will know most of the foundational material – but certain that not everyone will know all of it. The track sequence, with titles sometimes taken directly from the films that serve as sources and sometimes modified from them, starts with Toccata & Fugue & Funk in D minor (Bach/Lettermann); continues with Star Peace (John Williams/Lettermann); and then moves to Godfather (Nino Rota/Lettermann); Game of Thrones (Ramin Djawadi/Gomersall); and Gabriel’s Oboe (Ennio Morricone/Lettermann). The Morricone work, from the 1986 Robert de Niro vehicle The Mission, is one piece that may not be as well-known to listeners as the other music here. Nor will the track that follows necessarily be generally familiar: Tank! It is a Yoko Kano/Gomersall movement using the theme of the 2001 film Cowboy Bebop, an anime movie based on a 26-episode series with which listeners may or may not be acquainted.
The Quintessence Saxophone Quintet next moves to Maria (Leonard Bernstein/Gomersall); Indiana Jones (John Williams/Lettermann); Mission: Impossible (Lalo Schifrin/Lettermann); and then, for a two-minute finale and wrapup of the entire suite, A Cinematic March assembled and arranged by Gomersall from material by Alfred Newman, Henry Mancini, and Williams.
Much of A Cinematic Suite is exhilarating, and some of it is surprisingly moving: the variety of sounds that these five saxophonists produce is impressive, and the superficial but still evocative warmth and lyricism offered here and there come through to very fine effect. It is difficult to categorize just what this suite is, musically speaking: it is not quite film music, although film music pervades it; it is not quite classical music, although venerable classical techniques are used throughout, and the saxophonists’ classical bona fides come through consistently; it is not quite popular music, although the works on which it is built are drawn from a medium explicitly intended for popular consumption rather than concert-hall enjoyment. Listeners only moderately familiar with saxophones will likely be surprised at the instruments’ range both of notes and of communicative capability, and the CD can certainly be heard as a thoroughgoing exploration of saxophonic virtuosity. But what is interesting is that A Cinematic Suite, created for saxophone quintet, manages to transcend both the cinema and the writing/arrangement for these specific instruments. It is well and intelligently conceived, skillfully put together and performed, and offers considerable enjoyment throughout. It may be hard to explain just what this suite is, but it is not difficult at all to perceive that listening to it is a pleasurable experience – and a rather unusual one – that not only incorporates a considerable amount of music for movies but also transcends the music’s original reason for being.
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