Les choses de la vie – Cinema II
Renaud Capuçon (violin)
Les Siècles/Duncan Ward
rec. 2023, ONDIF Studio, Alfortville, France
Erato 5419 779905 [80]
This CD’s predecessor Cinema (Erato 9029563393) featured violinist Renaud Capuçon in re-arrangements of music originally written for films including Cinema Paradiso (Ennio Morricone), Out of Africa (John Barry), Schindler’s list (John Williams), The godfather (Nino Rota) and The adventures of Robin Hood (Erich Wolfgang Korngold). Each of those movies were widely shown in cinemas on their original release and have regularly appeared on TV schedules ever since. The consequent familiarity of their music will certainly have enhanced Cinema’s appeal to many listeners.
The fact that there’s now a second volume suggests that Capuçon’s Cinema must have been a commercial success, but instead of simply replicating the original’s formula this new disc takes us in a different direction. Its own distinctive focus is on film scores written by French composers between 1945 (Joseph Kosma’s Les portes de la nuit) and 2017 (Alexandre Desplat’s The shape of water). You might have imagined that movies well-known outside of French-speaking countries would have been chosen, so as to increase the album’s appeal. That’s not actually the case, however, and so, as a result, much of the music will probably be unfamiliar to most international listeners.
There are, it’s true, some exceptions. Rich and famous – legendary director George Cukor’s final film – was a major Hollywood production accorded worldwide distribution. The same was true of The Thomas Crown affair, The English patient, Lawrence of Arabia and Love story. As such, many listeners will already be familiar with their scores. Meanwhile, a few musical bells may also be rung by a couple of French productions that proved to be international financial and/or artistic hits – Jean de Florette, which took almost $5 million in 1980s money at the US box office, and Le dernier metro, a nominee for Best foreign film at both the Oscars and the Golden Globe awards. I doubt, however, that many listeners outside the Francophone world will find that they already know the scores of such productions as Les portes de la nuit, Le vieux fusil, Le passante de Sans-Souci or Joyeux Noël. I, for one, certainly didn’t.
Seven of the tracks on this disc – more than a third of the total – are of music by Georges Delerue and two more showcase scores by Philippe Sarde. Ten other composers are each represented by a single track. In re-arranging the music for violin and orchestra, composers Philippe Rombi (Thème de l’absence) and Vladimir Cosma (Les aventures de Rabbi Jacob) have tackled their own scores, while Cyrille Lehn is responsible for a further 16 of them. The individual tracks are relatively short. Apart from a single outlier – the Concerto de l’adieu that comes in at 9:57 in length and is the only piece not credited to one of the arrangers – all of them last somewhere between 2:28 (La chanson d’Hélène) and 5:12 (The shape of water).
However, while the tracks may be pretty similar in length, the immediacy of their appeal is, on the contrary, somewhat varied. While individual tastes may, of course, differ, I found the most appealing to be those written by Georges Delerue, whose career provides an enlightening example of how a mid-20th century jobbing composer might make a successful career. Delerue was without doubt an accomplished musician whose output ranged, at times, well beyond the ephemerality generally associated with music composed for film and television. The year 1963, for instance saw the premiere of his ballet The lesson, a work choreographed by Flemming Flindt that was sufficiently accomplished to be staged at the Opéra Comique and even danced by Rudolf Nureyev. The significant point in the present context, however, is that Delerue had originally written it for Danish television. He was a man who knew where, by the 1960s, the real money was to be made – and with something like 350 film and TV scores to his credit over his working life, he was clearly a very busy (and presumably wealthy) one. The single year 1981, for instance, saw the release not just of Rich and famous but of six other movies on which he had worked.
As already noted, Delerue is the most-represented composer on this disc, so it’s statistically likely that I would, in any case, have enjoyed at least one or two of his scores. Having now listened to this album several times, however, I find that I like all of them very much indeed. Those showcased on this disc are primarily characterised by the consistent deployment of the lushly romantic melodies that seem to have been the composer’s trademark. Thus, when my late colleague Ian Lace reviewed a two-disc set of his scores (Varèse Sarabande VSD-6223), he considered it “a wonderful collection, full of very agreeable and enchanting melodies – for that was Delerue[‘s] forté, creating beautiful, memorable tunes…. He is mainly remembered for those lush tunes… [and] although some of Delerue’s work may be said, with some justification, to have a certain ‘sameness’, it is so charming, that in an age starved of really good tunes/themes, this is a relatively small sin”.
I was delighted to learn from the useful booklet notes that Renaud Capuçon himself shares the same enthusiasm. Delerue’s music was, it turns out, the original inspiration for this new CD. “[T]wo or three years ago…”, Capuçon recalls, “I came to rediscover Delerue’s music and realised just what an extraordinary composer he was, his music sometimes reminding me of Gustav Mahler’s”. Well, on the basis of the seven tracks to be heard here, I’m not so sure that I discern that particular connection myself, but, at the very least, I’m very pleased to have had the opportunity of getting to hear more examples of Georges Delerue’s oeuvre.
Director Alain Corneau’s Fort Saganne may, as its name suggests, have been a military-themed film but it also incorporated a powerful dollop of amour and it is the latter feature that is emphasised in Philippe Sarde’s score as heard here. The same is true of the same composer’s dreamily romantic La chanson d’Hélène. If Delerue creates the more memorable melodies, Sarde seems, on this basis, to be a very effective master of musical atmosphere and well worth including in this collection.
None of the disc’s other composers is accorded more than just a single track. A handful of those – Michel Legrand’s The windmills of your mind, Jean-Claude Petit’s Verdi-esque Jean de Florette, Francis Lai’s Love story, Maurice Jarre’s Lawrence of Arabia and Joseph Kosma’s Les feuilles mortes (better-known in the English-speaking world as Autumn leaves) – are familiar ear-worms that will, no doubt, appeal to many listeners. Unless, however, you are an aficionado of French cinema – or, of course, one of our readers in France itself – I suspect that you’re unlikely to have encountered the other films from which the music’s been extracted. I must admit that, on first acquaintance, few of them made any outstanding impression, though, as I return to the CD to listen to their more familiar counterparts, I have no doubt that some, at least, may come to grow on me.
While the mood of most of the 19 tracks on this disc may be characterised as rather wistful and occasionally somewhat bitter-sweet, there are one or two exceptions. François de Roubaix’s Clara 1939 evolves, for instance, into an attractive dancehall number that might have been belted out by a big band, while Delerue’s propulsive Radioscopie will, in no time at all, have your feet cheerfully tapping away. The inclusion of the final track, Les aventures de Rabbi Jacob, may, though, be something of a stylistic mistake. Although the raucously lively and rambunctious piece is perfectly fine in itself, it simply doesn’t gel with what’s been heard on the rest of the disc. It’s as if M. Capuçon and Les Siècles were eager to let their hair down at the end of the recording session – but I suspect that the pleasure that they clearly derived from doing so will not necessarily be shared by all those to whom the rest of the CD has been designed to appeal.
My only other slight – and occasional – reservation was with tempi. A few tracks, including Francis Lai’s very well-known Love story, could have been a little more generously expansive and I wonder whether the arrangers and performers were perhaps a little too conscious of the risk of producing 80 minutes of sentimental schmaltz. They need not, I think, have worried too much. As history has repeatedly demonstrated, sentimentality laid on with a large brush is an enhancing feature of both films themselves and, specifically, their musical scores. At its most effective, it is surely a quality to be celebrated rather than avoided on principle.
Nevertheless, this is a welcome release full of enjoyable, well-executed performances recorded in first-rate sound. Renaud Capuçon claims to have identified in its tracks “a special kind of chic that is typically French”. Even if, just like his claim about Mahler, that’s just a whimsical fancy, Les choses de la vie: Cinema II is still well worth the attention of both lovers of French cinema and admirers of accomplished and often captivating music-making.
Rob Maynard
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Contents
Georges Delerue (1925-1992)
Rich and famous* (1981) from the film Rich and famous
Michel Legrand (1932-2019)
The windmills of your mind* (1968) from the film The Thomas Crown affair
Georges Delerue
Concerto de l’adieu (1992) from the film Diên Biên Phu
Joseph Kosma (1905-1969)
Les feuilles mortes* (1945) from the film Les portes de la nuit
Jean-Claude Petit (b. 1943)
Jean de Florette* (1986) from the film Jean de Florette
Georges Delerue
Le dernier métro* (1980) from the film Le dernier métro
Philippe Sarde (b. 1948)
La chanson d’Hélène* (1970) from the film Les choses de la vie
François de Roubaix (1939-1975)
Clara 1939* (1975) from the film Le vieux fusil
Georges Delerue
Radioscopie* (1968) from the radio programme Radioscopie
Memories of me* (1988) from the film Memories of me
Gabriel Yared (b. 1949)
As far as Florence* (1996) from the film The English patient
Georges Delerue
La passante du Sans-Souci* (1982) from the film La passante de Sans-Souci
Philippe Sarde
Fort Saganne* (1984) from the film Fort Saganne
Francis Lai (1932-2018)
Love story* (1970) from the film Love story
Philippe Rombi (b. 1968)
Thème de l’absence** (2005) from the film Joyeux Noël
Georges Delerue
Chère Louise* (1972) from the film Chère Louise
Alexandre Desplat (b. 1961)
The shape of water* (2017) from the film The shape of water
Maurice Jarre (1924-2009)
Lawrence of Arabia* (1962) from the film Lawrence of Arabia
Vladimir Cosma (b. 1940)
Les aventures de Rabbi Jacob*** (1973) from the film Les aventures de Rabbi Jacob
*arr. Cyrille Lehn (b. 1977)
**arr. Philippe Rombi
***arr. Vladimir Cosma
