Search - Summers, Slater :: Nyman: Mozart 252

Moz-art a la Nyman

Jim Shine | Dublin, Ireland | 05/27/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"First of all, let's answer the question the Nyman fan will be asking: Is it worth getting this disc if you already have the Drowning by Numbers soundtrack? Well, these are new recordings, made in 2005 and 2006. I don't own the original soundtrack but I do have a double-disc film music "best of" from a few years ago that has 3 pieces on it, and the new performances are certainly different enough to justify getting them. Take note, however, that if you have Nyman's Greenaway Revisited disc, then the 3 Drowning pieces from there appear to also be here.

So, what is this album anyway? According to Nyman's sleeve notes, this is a deliberately delayed 250th-anniversary tribute to Mozart, and all the pieces here - in fact only one of them written for the 2006 anniversary - make use of Mozart's music, some more obviously than others. Perhaps the most obvious is the first and oldest piece, In Re Don Giovanni, which takes the (orchestral) opening of Leporello's catalogue aria and has plenty of fun with it. Is this a modern classic by now? I don't know who decides these things! It helped launch Nyman's career and he's obviously still fond of it, as witness the affectionate Revisiting the Don (a 2006 BBC commission). This is a lovely lyrical piece, though still with the signature chugging sounds. Can a composer pay homage to himself?

The Drowning by Numbers music is based, as per director Peter Greenaway's instructions, on the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. This is most obvious in the first track here, Trysting Fields, which is essentially a cut-and-paste job that strings together the apoggiaturas, in order of occurrence, each one being played 3 times. A very minimalist idea, all right, but the end result is beautiful (and it's not just Mozart's beauty, either, though they're his notes); about 5 minutes in, the music perks up into a happy waltz. It's followed by the insistent strings and brass interjections of Not Knowing the Ropes, a Wedding Tango that begins rather drunkenly but evolves into something more romantic, the brash and cheerful Wheelbarrow Walk, and a rather Philip Glass-like Fish Beach. The finale comes in the form of Knowing the Ropes, which uses a motif that Nyman describes as a "wiggly semiquaver" and sounds like it might have snuck out of a Vivaldi concerto; this joyful piece features a prominent brass peroration and comes to a glorious, thrilling conclusion. (I think this recording utterly outshines the original version).

The last 3 pieces on the disc are from a 1991 film collaboration with Jeremy Newson for the BBC's Mozart anniversary programmes. O My Dear Papa is a reworking of O Isis und Osiris from The Magic Flute; it uses the texts of letters from Leopold Mozart to Wolfgang, and vice versa - bass Andrew Slater sings the father and contralto Hilary Summers the son. Summers' remarkable voice also features on I am an Unusual Thing, whose text is a riddle written by Mozart and makes use of music from a couple of string quartets, and the 2 singers deliver Profit and Loss, which documents Mozart's finances and brings us full circle to the music of In Re Don Giovanni. At first I wasn't sure if they were entirely successful, as there are times when the vocal parts sound a little like they've been squished into an existing structure rather than being themselves part of the structure, but the performances are marvellous and the 3 pieces are full of drama and offer a fascinating perspective on Mozart the man.

I recommend this wonderful disc to Nyman fans, Nyman neophytes, Mozart fans, and everyone else!"