MICHAEL NYMAN SOUNDTRACKS (The Composer’s Cut Series Vols. l – III) – The Piano; Nyman/Greenaway Revisited; The Libertine – Music composed, conducted and produced by Michael Nyman, mostly with The Michael Nyman Band and String Orchestra – Panagyric MNRCD202 (3 CDs) ****: [Distrib. by Naxos]
Nyman’s individual take on minimalism was probably exposed to a much-expanded audience with the soundtrack of the fine film The Piano, which he not only wrote but also played the piano part. The hot-house art film style of Peter Greenaway has not nearly as large an audience, but some of Nyman’s most interesting music has been created for these films. I hear his particular and highly identifiable style as similar to that of Philip Glass, but with Glass’ East Indian music influence replaced by a 50s rock/pop, almost Jerry Lee Lewis-like influence. He recorded these three new views of some of his musical cues in 2005 with his own ensemble.
The musical style of The Piano score is basically quite simple – a Schumann-like piano piece brought into more modern climes and improvisations. The 14 tracks maintain interest and surprisingly don’t become tiresome as the repetition of a main theme in many movie scores does when you listen to it on a CD without the film itself.
The second CD collect 13 tracks of themes from a number of the Peter Greenaway films, including The Draughtsman’s Contract, A Zed and Two Noughts, Drowning by Numbers, Prospero’s Books, and my favorite – The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. His catchy melodic structures are often repeated just about to the edge of acceptability, and alternate between string orchestra sounds and frantic wind bands that often sound like a Dutch band organ gone wild. The Memorial – from The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover – is the longest track on this CD and features a different dozen-person band than the other tracks. This terrific little tone poem accompanies the scene in which the lover, who has been killed by the thief, is served up as a special dish. (And speaking of dishes, the film may be worth seeing just for the dress Helen Mirren is wearing in this scene.) Nyman also did the artwork and photography for this set, and on this disc evidently designed it to be unreadable.
The third CD of soundtrack cues – 17 of them – comes from the 2006 historical drama that starred Johnny Depp and John Malkovich, The Libertine. Line many of Greenaway’s films, this one (though director Laurence Dunmore only used Nyman’s music and Greenaway’s set designer on it) can be a challenge to view and sort of dares the viewer to like it. Again there is a bow to the proper historical period, but a definite updating of the music to fit Nyman’s minimalist slant. Some of the cues will give a feeling for the storyline: Upon drinking in a bowl, the maimed debauchee, the submission, the mistress, a satire against reason. A contralto and The Capital Voices are heard on a number of the tracks, in addition to the Nyman Orchestra.
– John Sunier
