Tiomkin: Red River

Tiomkin

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Cat No: 8557699

Release Date: 04 January 2006

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313269921

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: TIOMKIN

Description
Dimitri Tiomkin (1894-1979)Red River Film Score, 1948Howard Hawks produced Red River, a saga of thecattle drives of old. The star [was] John Wayne, whocan move in the grand style among cowboys andrustlers, a lord of the prairie. So there I was, musicallyin the middle of the West again. A fellow Russian saidto me: 'How can you, a Russian from the St PetersburgConservatory, write music for a Western?''Well,' I replied in Russian, 'Did Johann Strauss,when he wrote 'The Blue Danube,' know how toswim?- Dimitri TiomkinEver westward, from the banks of the wide Americanrivers--the Missouri, the Ohio, the Mississippi and theShenandoah--to the expanse of the Great Plains, to thesweeping vistas of Monument Valley, to the flatlandsof Texas and the Chisholm trail...And then beyond lies a continent of legendaryscores for Hollywood Westerns, a topography of mythsand legends.Some are signposts, Garden of Evil (1954), Tributeto a Bad Man (1956), Bite the Bullet (1975) and thetelevision mini-series, Lonesome Dove (1989). Thenothers are huge territories marked with towering mesasand massive cliffs--Max Steiner Territory, AlfredNewman Territory.And Dimitri Tiomkin Territory, where the RedRiver T brand--T for Tiomkin--rules over anexpansive range of great film music that includes Duelin the Sun (1946), The Big Sky (1952), High Noon(1952), Giant (1956), Night Passage (1957), Gunfightat the O.K. Corral (1957) and Rio Bravo (1959).Here on this frontier where longitude and latitudeintersect, three great scores triangulate as cornerstonesfor assessing any music for Hollywood Westerns: MaxSteiner's The Searchers (1956), Alfred Newman'sHow the West was Won (1962), and arguably thegreatest, Dimitri Tiomkin's Red River (1948). All otherscores for Westerns surely follow these three greatworks in both quality and cinematic application.These scores are prime examples of music asnarrative literature. Proceeding from the premise thatall film music is linked to cinematic narrative, then allmusic for films works best as orchestral narrative. Straytoo far into the abstract and the music becomes ananonymous irrelevance when experienced away fromits source--or worse, it becomes a musical lampoon ofcounterpoint. On the other hand, a great film musiccomposer can wed the abstract to specific orchestraldescriptions and cinematic flow--mindful ofsymbolism and narrative--and create a truly rich,rewarding and exciting listening experience quite apartfrom the film.An unabashed, self-admitted showman, eager toplease audiences, Dimitri Tiomkin became increasinglyadept at this--and in this respect, Red River is his firstreally great personal score, the first to truly bear hisbold stylistic signature as he became one of the mostrenowned maestros of Hollywood's Golden Age ofMotion Picture Music.... Tiomkin has always had the ability to composemusic which pulses and surges, and he has attemptedwhenever possible to be involved with his films whilethey were being made, rather than wait until theywere
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