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February 07, 2007  The Ennio Morricone show at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday night was really remarkable. Although the tickets were a tad expensive for 90 minutes of music, and some pieces were more successful than others, seeing Ennio live in New York was something to cherish. Specifically, I applauded the desire to play some lesser-known works, if only because the general public probably knows just four or five Ennio themes. Included on the program was the theme for the 1971 film Maddalena, a movie that is virtually unknown except for the fact that it yielded two of Ennio's most glorious elegies, the main title "Come Maddalena" as well as "Chi Mai," which would become a hit a decade later when Ennio re-used it for the score to the Jean-Paul Belmondo film Le Professionel. Sadly, "Chi Mai" was not on the program. Other than that, most of the big themes were there: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America, Once Upon a Time in the West, Cinema Paradiso and of course The Mission. The concert opened with the rhythmic main theme from The Untouchables but sadly didn't go into the heroic end title, which is one of Ennio's best works. "Once Upon a Time in the West," with its soaring soprano solo, was probably the most successful piece of the evening. It was part of the spaghetti western suite, which didn't include anything from A Fistful of Dollars or For a Few Dollars More. Also, the suite from The Mission, which ended the scheduled show, left me a bit cold; not only was the arrangement different, it was too short and didn't have any time to develop. In contrast, it seemed like the suite from Cinema Paradiso, a score I've never really liked, was never going to end. Stephen Holden had some good and bad things to say about the show in the Times. I would probably agree with him; the strangest phenomenon was that there was no new material for any of the three encores. In a career spanning 400 movies, you'd think Ennio could have found something, even if it was the main title from The Humanoid. I guess the problem with film music concerts is that they have to concentrate on themes in general, and themes that people might recognize more specifically. The best composers have always written more than themes, and written some of their best work for individual moments in the most forgettable movies. |