Soundtracks are big business. And that isn’t just a reference to the amount of financial investment in getting the score, recording, mixing, editing, and the rest of the production process down pat. If a composer gets the music right, as a quality product that not only matches the onscreen action but also complements it, the soundtrack becomes a valuable integral factor in presenting the viewing public with an exciting return on their cinema ticket expenditure.
There are, indeed, very few movies that don’t come with music sewn into the cinematic seams. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 horror thriller The Birds is probably the best-known example. Had that concept taken off, the likes of Hans Zimmer would have been out of a job and have had to look for another way of making ends meet.
Thankfully, Hitchcock’s groundbreaking work did not put movie music composers out of work. Imagine, if you possibly can, how box-office-busting animated movie The Lion King might have turned out without Zimmer’s Oscar Award-winning score. And there’s the sonic substratum to the 2021 epic space opera version of Dune, also written by Zimmer and which also brought him an Oscar.
Israeli audiences will be able to enjoy some of the sonics, sumptuous textures, and emotive vibes of Zimmer numbers when the International Symphony Orchestra (ISO) comes over here to proffer its Lords of The Sound doubleheader. The concerts, which are due to take place in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Beersheba from January 29 to February 4, take in two set lists. There will be four renditions of selected Zimmer hits and three more shows presented under the “Lord of the Rings in Concert” banner, the latter, naturally, based on scores by multi-Oscar Award winner Howard Shore, including the soundtracks of two of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
This looks set to be one of the biggest musical extravaganzas witnessed in this country for some years. The whole two-parter will be overseen by Ukrainian conductor Nazar Yakobenchuk directing the efforts of the 45-piece orchestra with a couple of vocalists adding to the textural fray.
Israeli audiences
Yakobenchuk says he is looking forward to getting the chance to roll out the group’s wares to local culture consumers.
“We are very happy to come to Israel. I hope we stay alive,” he adds with more than a modicum of humor. As a Ukrainian, the conductor is, of course, no stranger to the challenges of living in a war zone. Dark jocularity apart, he says he expects to get a good response to the orchestra’s output here. “As I understand it, Israeli audiences are open-minded and they really like music. And Israeli people are really gifted.”
That was nice to hear and, it must be said, he has good grounds for that supposition. We also like to see a show, in the good old plain entertaining sense of the word. Yakobenchuk goes along with the approach of non-hierarchical culture.
“Punk music can also have a strong idea [behind it]. It depends a lot on the band, on the people who are performing it. I think there is only [good music and] empty music, without ideas, if you could call it music. When you have that it causes pain.” Well put. That put me in mind of the observation by peerless jazz composer and pianist Duke Ellington who once famously said: “There are only two kinds of music – good music and the other kind.”
If you are endeavoring to pull off a convincing onstage reading of an artistic work, it helps to be enamored of the score in question, and the creator’s oeuvre in general. Yakobenchuk says he has been a fan of Zimmer’s for quite some time.
“One of my favorite soundtracks by Hans Zimmer is the one for [2014 epic sci-fi drama] Interstellar. The first time I heard this music I was astonished. It is really deep music, and the main idea of this film is love, human love. He embodied that in the music.”
The conductor’s current stint with the ISO, which began about a year ago, has been a long time coming.
“I remember when I was a student at the Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music in Kyiv. I really wanted to perform Zimmer’s music from the Pirates of the Caribbean. And suddenly, I got this opportunity, 15 years later but with this orchestra. And now I have the opportunity to do it in Israel, which is really nice,” he says.
You can’t go far wrong with a repertoire predominantly based on such spectacular material as Zimmer’s portfolio and Shore’s charts for The Lord of the Rings. I wondered, however, whether Yakobenchuk took into consideration the fact that the vast majority of the audience members, if not all, will probably have watched the Tolkien trilogy and probably several of the movies scored by Zimmer. “I definitely think about that,” he concurs. “I thought about how we should perform this music because people will have heard it before.” Then again, they stand to get some different from the Lords of The Sound double feature. “They will have heard the music as it was recorded in a special studio, maybe in Hollywood or in Vienna. It should definitely be different when we perform it live on a stage.”
There is also the matter of personnel downscaling. “We cannot afford to travel with an orchestra of 100 players,” Yakobenchuk notes. The Ukrainian ensemble is not exactly diminutive, but it is far smaller than the troupe employed on the recordings.
The conductor is also keen to offer his audiences a one-time experience. “We have to choose special moments in the music. It shouldn’t be boring for the audience.” The sensorial-disciplinary divide comes into play here. “When you see the movie, the main action is on the screen, and the music is just like secondary stuff. In our case, the music is the main thing. That means we have to plan how to perform it. I, for example, changed some tempos because if we play such a slow tempo like in the movie, it would be a bit boring for the [concert] audience.”
With the instrumental and vocal firepower at his behest, and with such rich quality compositions, there does not seem to be much chance of his audiences here nodding off. Added to that there is some visually aesthetic enhancement with video art playing on screens behind the stage. All in all, an entertaining time appears to be in store for us.
For tickets and more information: The Music of Hans Zimmer- https://www.eventim.co.il/eventseries/the-music-of-hans-zimmer-3772171/Lord of the Rings in Concert: https://www.eventim.co.il/eventseries/the-lord-of-the-rings-in-concert-3772197/