Concert review: Music from movies showcases magical power of melodies

French Cinematic Icons: Bolling And Beyond

Roberto Alvarez & Friends
Alliance Francaise
Nov 10

Music in movies has the capacity to touch and move, and often the melodies are better remembered than the films themselves. As a prelude to the French Film Festival, Singapore Symphony Orchestra flautist Roberto Alvarez and his friends crafted an attractive programme as a reminder of the magical power of music.

Does anybody remember the star-studded California Suite (1978), for which the late Maggie Smith won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress? Arguably more memorable was French jazz composer and pianist Claude Bolling’s score. With its highly syncopated and catchy Main Title, Ukrainian pianist Kseniia Vokhmianina was obliged to jump through many hoops to accompany Alvarez’s silvery lines.

Together with bassist Julian Li and percussionist Ramu Thiruyanam, the cosmopolitan quartet followed up with movements from Bolling’s Suite For Flute And Jazz Piano Trio, his most heard work. The formally trained Bolling was so adept in merging jazz and classical idioms that his fusion pieces are beloved by artists across the stylistic divide.

Sentimentale is a classic, the flute’s legato passages well-contrasted with the movement’s groovily rhythmic central section. The jig-like bantering of Fugace was in the form of a fugue, the tricky counterpoint of which German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach would have been proud.

The easy swing of Irlandaise (Irish) would soon give way to the frenetic pulse of Veloce, which closed the concert’s first half with aplomb. While this music is easy on the ear, it is very difficult to pull off convincingly. The quartet was not just on top of their game, but also having great fun.

The oldest piece on show was French composer and organist Camille Saint-Saens’s shimmering Aquarium from Carnival Of The Animals, which made an appearance in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008). Far more recent was the music of French musician Yann Tiersen, whose La Valse D’Amelie and Comptine D’Un Autre Ete, L’Apres-Midi in Amelie (2001) had little to do with French composers Maurice Ravel or Claude Debussy, but more the drolleries of Erik Satie married with minimalism.

From French composer Ludovic Bource, George Valentin and Waltz For Peppy from The Artist (2011) had ragtime and dancehall influences, sounding as elegant and insouciant as French music could possibly be.

A suite of movie melodies was paraded, including Alexandre Desplat’s Elisa’s Theme from The Shape Of Water (2017), a waltz of touching simplicity; Francis Lai’s A Man And A Woman from the 1966 movie of the same name, a swinger known only to people of a certain vintage; and Carlos D’Alessio’s End Credits to Delicatessen (1991), appropriately cheerful for a black humour horror film about cannibalism.

It was, however, back to Bolling that the fab four returned for an encore, the Love Theme from California Suite. That was simply charming.