Requiem For My Friend - Preisner / Rewakowicz, Kasprzyk, Sinfonia Varsovia, et al

Known more for his film scores than for his full-length concert works, Zbigniew Preisner injects a good dose of his famed film score methodologies into this recording. Divided into two parts, Requiem and Life, this work is outstanding in its first nine movements, capturing soaring choral blasts that startle and hold the ear steadily, as does the occasional churning organ and the chamber ensemble, which seems to make far more sound than is possible. The Requiem as a whole is also stylistically cleaved in two: Life heads wholeheartedly into the realm of filmic composition (doing so in four episodes). Resolution is always on the horizon, but the musical tensions seem directed toward a visual conclusion, rather than any kind of sonic release or resolution. To that end, the music itself, especially early in Life, is a bit thin. Maybe it's the alto saxophone, which plays simple figures that get washed out in the cavernous audio. Or maybe it's the building march-like cadence of the "Apocalypse "episode, which seems to announce a particular character without ever producing one. Perhaps it's the desire to create mood without exploring the complexities. As film music, this is excellent stuff, easily capable of throwing musical beams on action. As a purely sonic phenomenon, it's sometimes too much, sometimes too little, and only briefly balanced between the two. --Andrew Bartlett