My Favourite Scores – 1934

• Lieutenant Kijé
• Sergei Prokofiev
• Vox Box / 1990 / 20:27

From what I have seen of the film, Lieutenant Kijé is bizarre. Full of extremely exaggerated acting, I had hoped to watch the film in order to see how Prokofiev’s original music fits. But the film is so bizarre and the copy I saw (streaming on Google Video) is so bad that I gave up pretty quickly. So the suite version (premiered in 1937) will need to do for the time being. I believe the actual score isn’t available on CD and most people will have heard the symphonic suite that the composer put together that is based on the score.

It’s difficult to look beyond the popular “Troika” when this score (and suite) is mentioned – the fourth movement of the suite, “Troika”, is frequently used in films and documentaries and usually features on “best of” classical music compilations. Most of the suite has been used in film, documentaries and popular music.

The familiar melodies heard in movements 2-4 (“Romance”, “Kijé’s Wedding” and “Troika”) appear throughout the suite and it is this familiarity that means Prokofiev’s piece is chosen for this year.

Ten Tracks Today – 27th September 2011

01 – “Tara and Mother” – True Blood – Nathan Barr

I like how Barr emphasises the cello in his score for True Blood. This track has a definite hymn-like feel to it – I suppose to highlight the fervent religious streak in Tara’s mother’s character.

02 – “End Credits” – Medal of Honor: Airborne – Michael Giacchino

The little hints of the Medal of Honor theme – before it is heard in full – teases the listener at the beginning of this cue. Atypical of what you would expect for an end titles track (usually it’s grand statements of themes from the outset) this is much more restrained in tone: respectful rather than celebratory. One of my favourite game score themes.

03 – “Bowser’s Galaxy Reactor” – Super Mario Galaxy – Mahito Yokota

A big part of the enjoyment of this game for the Wii platform is Yokota’s music. A lot of times in other games, when I get stuck, the music quickly becomes annoying. But not in Super Mario Galaxy. Sometimes it can actually be annoying if I finish a level quickly and don’t hear the same piece for hours on end! Grand and orchestral.

BALLAD OF A SOLDIER – Mikhail Ziv

Original Review by Alan Rogers

Credit needs to be given at the outset to Jim Lochner and his FilmScore ClickTrack piece “9 On The 9th” from November 2010. On that day he selected nine favourite foreign film scores and at number one of his list was Mikhail Ziv’s score to Ballad of A Soldier. Both Grigori Chukhrai’s 1959 film and Mikhail Ziv as a film composer were entirely new to me, but after doing a bit of research and following the links Jim provided find Ziv’s music, I am now writing this review echoing his original high recommendation.

Ballad of A Soldier is a 1959 award-winning Soviet film set during World War II – but is not really a war film. At its heart, it is a film of two love stories – 1) a story of the blossoming attraction between a soldier returning from the front and a stowaway he meets on a train on his journey home and 2) the love between a mother and her son (the soldier). Our accidental hero, rather than accepting a commendation for destroying some German tanks, asks for leave so that he can return home to see his mother (and fix the roof of her house). The film then follows his journey and the people he encounters along the way (including the pretty girl who he finds himself becoming increasingly attracted to). Russian composer Mikhail Ziv composes a score that ignores the usual war movie film score staples of being brass-heavy and full of marches. Ballad of A Soldier‘s score is one that is thematic and contains poignant and emotional music – in keeping with the director’s emphasis on the human stories of how war affects the ordinary person (as well as focusing on the foolishness of war).

All that is available of Ziv’s score is a 20-minute suite of music played by the Russian State Symphony Cinema Orchestra, conducted by Sergei Skripka. But this suite is ample to conclude that the music is film scoring of high quality.