It seems that not a month goes by where I'm not informed that Ennio Morricone is doing a concert in some European country in a town or city I've never heard of, yet never does it say London, England. Distressing, since I can think of nothing finer than to see a superb composer conduct some of his most gorgeous music with a live orchestra and chorus. Therein, I suppose lies the problem with staging a Morricone concert. You really do need the chorus and/or a soprano, preferably the wonderful Edda dell'Orso as well as orchestra. I've seen Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams in concert and they both get away with just the orchestra, but Morricone really requires the full setup for his most famous works. Fortunately, Sony have recorded such a concert and presented the highlights on a single disc for everyone to at least have a hint at the live experience.
The selection is gentle to start with; the gorgeous themes from Cinema Paradiso are introduced from a solo piano opening to the more fully orchestrated versions. However, for every gentle and nostalgic Morricone themes there are a dozen more abrasive and stirring efforts. Perhaps the most strident of these are presented in the selections from his Spaghetti Westerns, which starts with an impressively staged orchestral version of the absurdly famous title theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It is the kind of theme that, when you think too hard, seems as though it would be impossible to replicate and while it would be impossible to replicate the original, this epic sounding rendition is quite spectacular and works better than one would dare hope. Morricone purists would probably find it difficult to imagine some of their favourite themes without Edda dell'Orso, but soprano Gemma Bertagnolli does a superb job in providing a brilliant alternative to dell'Orso's distinctive voice. Bertagnolli appears in several other cues, the best being The Ecstacy of Gold from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which probably surpasses the main theme in sheer bravura. The more expansive acoustic and performance here heighten the impact yet further.
There are of course plenty of titles that will be instantly familiar, Cinema Paradiso, The Mission, his Spaghetti Western efforst, Bugsy and so forth, but there are plenty that are not so familiar. Perhaps the best of these is Burn! which is a scintilatting choral effort, that starts with a short organ motif, onto which is built percussion and then layers of choral motifs, the upper voices counterpointing the tenors and basses. As with most Morricone choral pieces, it relies on variations on short melodic fragments that repeat, overlap and play off each other, but it's a formula that works and the end result is thrilling. Excellent though Burn! would have been for a finale, the two tracks from The Mission are even more impressive; Gabriel's Oboe is lovely, but the real highlight is the concert arrangement of On Earth as it is in Heaven. This overlaps the Falls theme with the choral motif; the end result giving the impression of two entire choirs performing in counterpoint together with a huge brass presence and the strings merely providing the backing. With this kind of scale it is impressive to note that everyone performs together; it could so easily fall apart with each part becoming unsynchronised, but the result is spectacular to say the least.
Perhaps the only niggle with this album is simply because it is recorded live, even over several day's worth of performances. There is the occasional splutter of background noise, which is a little off putting in the quieter sections. The acoustics and recording quality do suffer a little, particularly on the very loud sections - a studio version of the Mission finale would probably give it the final gloss and acoustic depth it perhaps lacks. It would also permit greater clarity for some of the inner parts which do have the slight tendancy to get a little lost in the mix on occasion. Countering all this is the sheer bravura of the performances which more often than not match the excitement of the originals. There are more Morricone compilations than you can shake a stick at and have a larger selection of titles, but most simply feature original tracks. This of course provides some scintillating new arrangements and performances of some of Morricone's most brilliant themes.
Rating ~ 
Total Time ~ 62:19