Yves Levêque: PC in C minor 'Ariana'

[Alan Howe]

A modern-day 'Warsaw Concerto', perhaps?
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9559567--ariana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7xHfJzyBmQ  (i)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ3wkYGqLh4  (ii)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWeNl01H9PQ  (iii)

[Mark Thomas]

Yes, I saw this and have wavered over downloading it. Still am.

[terry martyn]

More "Spellbound" than "Warsaw", in my opinion.   No thanks.

[Alan Howe]

Probably, yes. But still something for modern-day PC/film music buffs.

[Alan Howe]

This is probably musical 'tosh', but it's tosh that I can't resist. Tunes galore, luxuriant orchestration, rip-offs from countless composers - lovely. Doubtless it'll be forgotten in a trice, but who cares? This is a lot more fun than plenty of more highly regarded piano concertos I can think of...

[Gareth Vaughan]

I absolutely agree. Trash can be fun sometimes. Great fun!

[tuatara442442]

luxuriant orchestration

Luxuriant in strings, yes. But I wouldn't call the scoring for wind solos (especially woodwinds) luxuriant, though after listening through it I was consolated by a little more woodwind solos than I expected.
I've always feel this pseudo-Rach (it doesn't really emulate the agile mode of Rach anyway) style of early Hollywood film scores only works when it's short. It is good to enjoy it for 1 minute during climax, but when it goes on longer, it just feels insipid though not unlistenable.
Constantly slowish, fast sections quickly dispersed by slowish ones, orchestration dominated by strings supported by brass (and timpani, sometimes choir), un-rhythmic heavy bass, the almost always depressed sustain pedal of the piano, overtly pretentious sound to the extent of trivial. Being grandly dramatic for being grandly dramatic's sake results in being monotonous. Even a piano and orchestra Japanese pop song arrangement one of my friends recently recommended to me has a really energetic central scherzo episode!
The short film concertos are fine since they end quickly enough, but I also largely don't feel good about Corentin Boissier's (I know he's here sometimes, but I'll say it straight) two recorded concertos, except for the Mov I of Glamour concerto which I constantly revisit for tunes. He too heavily orchestrated such movements like Waltz-Romance, making the the waltz's rhythm almost disappeared. The third movements of both Glamour and Marlowe concerto are more curious. The former is entitled Spanish lovers in Brooklyn and I can't see the reason that the relations between a couple should be so grandly dramatic, and don't see it more fit than, say, Novák's depiction of a couple in his Slovak Suite. The latter, marked Allegro feroce, tempo di toccata, is all the more amusing. It is also not rhythmic enough, not feroce enough and definitely doesn't feel agile enough to be a toccata. If anything, I would say it is of the ferocity of an underwater fight, with every move slowed down. Fortunately his chamber music is not this insipid, and more acerbically fresh. It is really a kind of salvation from those two concertos.
There's nothing wrong for the large number of common soundtrack composers today to emulate this style, but why can't they try to add more woodwind parts in orchestral soundtrack composition (as for speed and rhythm, there are indeed tons of examples of rhythmic pno & str soundtracks but their orchestration is uninteresting anyway)?

[Mark Thomas]

My "new" music queue is a long one, so I've only just listened to this. Yes, we're definitely in sub-Rachmaninov Warsaw Concerto territory here, at least for the first two movements. The first is more rhapsodic than an Allegro in full flight and the second is almost mono-thematic but if you're not too snobbish about your music then each is generously melodic and enjoyable in an undemanding way. There's a bit of a stylistic lurch when we reach the finale which somehow manages to couple sub-Gershwin jazz-inflected harmonies with a couple of prominent "chugging" passages that put me in mind of Holst's Mars. Not unpleasant but it doesn't really belong with what came before.

[semloh]

I get the impression that the composer may have been intending it to be taken seriously, but for me it's superficial and fun.