It's time to go out on a limb. Are Danny Elfman's Percussion Concerto and the other works on his new album "great music"? Should this classical music, from the former lead singer and songwriter of new wave band Oingo Boingo—who composed film scores for Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, and Spider-Man, and whose music introduces Desperate Housewives and The Simpsons—be in the same conversation with Albéniz, Scriabin, Ligeti, Glass, Gluck, Brahms, and Beethoven, whose work appears on our other Recording of the Month candidate, Yuja Wang's Vienna Recital?
All I know for certain is that Elfman's new Sony Classical recording, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta, is a helluva wild ride. Sometimes exuberant, sometimes eerie, frequently brash, and overflowing with color and contrast, it's filled with more frenetic energy than unleashed by all the espressos a Starbucks franchise can prepare in the 62 minutes it takes to listen to the album all the way through. Great music or not, it's an album you're going to want to play over and over on your best sound system.
Elfman's new album is a wild ride, but it's not a one-trick pony.
Depending upon your criteria for system showoffs, this may not be an ideal candidate to replace the best RCA Living Stereo and Telarc titles of veteran audiophiles' dreams. The photos in the scanty liner notes reveal more booms and microphone than many of us encounter in our lifetimes. Parts of the stage in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall look like a land mine. I can't begin to imagine the nightmares that mix engineer Dennis Sands must have experienced before sending the result off to Patricia Sullivan for mastering. Even if they—and recording engineers Peter Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley—didn't create the most transparent recording on the planet, it's one with enough spectacular effects, percussive variety, and brilliant, tinkly highs to wow you and your friends for days on end. It's destined to give your system either a gold medal or a heart attack.
Though the Percussion Concerto is the title track, the album kicks off with Wunderkammer, which Elfman created in three movements for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (NYOGB). Inspired by a "wonder room," which the composer defines as a "a cabinet of curiosities or even a room of mystery and oddities which can be fun, or scary, intriguing or instructive, but never boring," the piece is, as you'd expect or at least hope, a journey into wonder. It begins joyfully, soaring through the skies over the (possibly synthesized) sounds of a wordless chorus. One universe after another opens before us. There's a sense of spiraling up, down, and in, of something mysterious and mischievous happening. Zoom! Bang! Bingo! Bullseye! I kept wondering what it would be like to choreograph a dance performance to this music. The first movement ends with the chorus taking us down a strange and mysterious path.
Unexpectedly, Wunderkammer's second movement begins in a lovely, quasipastoral manner. Emotionally touching, exploratory in nature, and filled with mystery, it eventually cedes to a final movement that's given the full-kitchen-sink treatment. Percussion goes wild in what feels like a bizarre, circus-like waltz around a circular stage. Then the theme gets passed around, everyone and everything goes nuts, and we discover ourselves immersed in a huge, wild, certifiably crazy climax.
Elfman's Percussion Concerto for grown-up orchestra is no less of a wild ride, but it's considerably more eerie and disturbing. Its music can even feel threatening at times. The first movement, entitled Triangle, rather speaks for itself. After two listen-throughs, during which I sat alternately transfixed and apprehensive, I found myself unable to write a word about it. You can hear the influence of the West African instruments Elfman first encountered during his travels at age 18. You can also hear elements of the metal-based Indonesian gamelan ensembles he played in during his 20s, and the metal and wood percussion instruments he built and played during his early years as a theatrical performer.
The second movement, D.S.C.H., presumably reflects the influence of Shostakovich filtered through Elfman's maximally different lens. At one point its music brought to mind a very large man outfitted in a duck suit with large webbed feet, waddling around a carnival. I'd love to learn what images pop into your head as you listen. The third movement, Down, conjures a strange, hazy universe with no definite path forward, until 5:45, when an elephant lumbers into the room and hell breaks loose. What transpires after that is anyone's guess. The final movement, Syncopate, has tremendous forward drive and energy, some wacky harmonies, and a sudden conclusion. What a trip.
The final, one-movement work, Are You Lost?, is a never-performed-before adaptation of a movement Elfman wrote for piano, violin, and vocal trio. Here, it's performed by the Kantos Chamber Choir and full orchestra. This rather subdued, anything-but-exuberant music may seem anticlimactic in this context, yet isn't, but it isn't helped by impossible-to-discern French lyrics for which neither text nor translation appears in the booklet. It's for the sheer thrill and boundless inventiveness of Wunderkammer and the Percussion Concerto that you'll hit repeat.—Jason Victor Serinus
COMMENTS
So I'm just gonna leave this here...
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-10-20/danny-elfman-is-accused-of-sexual-assault-by-a-second-woman-alleging-abuse-when-she-was-a-young-composer
https://www.billboard.com/pro/danny-elfman-defamation-lawsuit-denying-sex-abuse-claims/
I don't know if he's guilty, but maybe we should wait and find out before lauding him.
The woke world seems obsessed with this question now. Pablo Picasso seems, by all available accounts, to have been an asshole (apologies and kudos to Jonathan Richman). Does that mean his works are dismissable?
In a broader sense, who knows what the secret predilictions are/were of our masters of industry, politics and science?
I say we accept a person's work as being separate from that person's private or inner life. What they make is what they are proud of and want the world to see, what they hide, they perhaps feel ashamed of.
Imperfection is the human state
I agree. Genius need not be virtuous to be recognized.
And you clearly don't know what "woke" means. It relates to realizing and acknowledging the 400+ years of slavery, racism, and discrimination that Black people in America have been suffering under, and under which they still suffer. I.e., you woke up to their reality and history. Complaining about "woke" anything just makes you sound like a racist, ignorant, or both (like racist idiots Bill Maher and Elon Musk).
I, on the other hand, was referring to a White man accused of being Louis CK level skeevy with some women and I won't separate the *LIVING* person from their art because that person will profit monetarily and socially from any support. Once they're dead, then I can appreciate (or purchase) their art if it's any good. Danny hasn't been found guilty, but my "rule" on sex pests and worse is more than one (unrelated) complaint and I assume guilt. At least it's not Michael Jackson bad. Or even Frank Zappa level skeevy, though as far as I know Frank's raunchy acts were with consenting adults. His lyrics are more autobiographical than you may know.
N.B. I've always found Danny Elfman to be a one trick pony going back to Oingo Boingo so I was never his audience anyway. He peaked in my opinion with "The Alphabet Song" from the movie Forbidden Zone.
Oh, and cancel culture isn't a thing unless it rises to Socrates levels (read up on why he died) because there have always been consequences for actions - just ask Michael Richards. People who complain about it are upset that they're in the "find out" portion of FAFO.
And to you question about the captains of industry/politicians, Jeff Epstein was NOT an outlier - as a group they're pretty skeevy.
PS - nice Repo Man reference.
Apparently "woke" has a different meaning here in Australia. I use it to refer to a mind which is overly concerned with signalling its owner's virtue and worthiness by adhering tightly to the latest social and intellectual trends without really doing any independent deep thinking.
Thanks for picking up on the Jonathan Richman Picasso joke
Hear, hear. I daresay that's the sense in which most people take it here in the States, too -- though, as the previous poster noted, that was not what the word originally meant at all.
I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of simply dismissing a performer or composer's work on the basis of the perceived offenses of s/his private life. Who are we to judge? And where to draw the line? Kevin Spacey's and Louis C.K.'s offenses were one thing. But to hound Ellen DeGeneres -- whom I admit I never cared for -- off TV for a "toxic work environment"? To get WNYC's Bob Garfield fired for "yelling"? In real life, you get yelled at. Pull yourself together and yell back, or develop a tougher skin. Certainly, you have to as a performer (especially if John Simon is doing the reviewing!).
And it's only a matter of time before the cancellers get called out for behavior that they think is perfectly innocent, or even justified. (What, do they think they're all Mother Teresa? Oh, wait -- she apparently yelled at her nuns. Geez, not even Mother Teresa...!)
I was lately listening to James Levine's recording of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." Still the most consistent of the commercial recordings, to my ear -- which you can dismiss if you like; I hear what I hear. Shall I stop listening to it? (At least, while he was conducting, he wasn't molesting anyone.) And we won't even talk about Wagner and his anti-Semitism, which was real.
"by all available accounts" is a dubious source. Probably referencing opportunistic journalist's third-handed accounts from Francois Gilot - an ex wife. That personality assessment has nothing to do with his art and goes against a mountain of facts starting with John Richardson's four volume set "A Life of Picasso."
Assessing any artist's work through a media-centered socio-political lens is the mark a lazy poorly educated critic.
Van Gogh and Lou Reed were probably not as nice as Norman Rockwell or Taylor Swift but I'd rather paint crows and walk on the wild side.
wouldn't everybody?
herb
"Assessing any artist's work through a media-centered socio-political lens is the mark a lazy poorly educated critic.
Van Gogh and Lou Reed were probably not as nice as Norman Rockwell or Taylor Swift but I'd rather paint crows and walk on the wild side."
- can I use this? So great Herb.
Paying people like Chris Brown or Kevin Spacey? A pedophile like Roman Polanski? That's the real issue - not whether the "art" is good, but should a crappy person like Brown, Spacey, or Polanski profit and thrive in spite of how horrible they are as humans because art. Most problematic artists are dead (and artists in general, because time) which makes for a very different calculation since they cannot profit from their creations. And it is absolutely valid to look at art through the lens of the artist's beliefs - H.P. Lovecraft was a virulent racist and it clearly shows in his writing.
I do firmly believe that art should also be assessed with the culture/time in which it was produced. Things we find problematic now maybe weren't such a big deal in the past. Blazing Saddles is brilliant (except Mel can never stick the landing) but couldn't be made today in part because the butt of every joke is White people and Karen would throw a fit (assuming she actually understood the movie, a big assumption with Karens). Also, ignorant people who don't get that it is actually making fun of White people and think it's racist against non-Whites because of the liberal use of racial slurs.
Actually, my problem with "Blazing Saddles" was that I simply didn't find it funny. Most of the "humor" came from precisely landing a profanity or vulgarity. The timing is an art, but not one that helped there.
The problem with the issue of whether some people should "profit and thrive" is that -- well, what are they to do? Should they stop working altogether and go on the public dole, so that all of us -- feminists included -- have to support them? (Not that the high-flying stars would have to do that, but a lot of "cancelled" lesser people would.) That doesn't seem right. Surely, if they've offended, they still have to work at *something*!
He was making a joke with a Repo Man movie reference (and the song, "Pablo Picasso" which has a repeated line - "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.")
Repo Man, one of the most quotable movies ever and produced by one of the Monkeys! It is also Emilio Estevez's best movie.
Assessing an artist by their non-art actions is valid while they're living because they will profit from any support. It's also tacitly saying you're okay with whatever crappy thing(s) they're doing. I'm not giving racist/mysoginist/skeevy a-holes my money, but maybe their estate/family if they produced art that I like. Michael Jackson is a good musical example, or pretty much any of the 50's rock/rockabilly/country stars (like Jerry Lee Lewis, the king of mid-century skeevy). Both Van Gough and Lou Reed are dead and besides being respectively mentally ill and a junky, no skeletons have emerged from their closets.
I enjoy most of the art that Peter Christopherson made while alive, but he didn't get the nickname "Sleazy" for nothing - watch his Hanson (I Will Come to You) video or his band Coil's "Love's Secret Domain" video and tell me you don't need a shower afterwards (he may have been attracted to underage boys). Doesn't change the brilliance of his "Tainted Love" video or the album artwork he did as a partner in Hipgnosis (Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, et. al.) which was really good.
with wittgenstein's conjecture that ethics and aesthetics are one and the same? because in my opinion the conjecture is not reversible.
I regard art-making as the most ethical of all human pursuits.
In the art I favor, its content is pure high-level sentiment.
"Aesthetics" are more of an afterthought. More about style and taste and academic paper writing.
To me, art's greatest power hides in the ambiguity of its forms.
To me beauty and mystery are "one and the same."
That's how I approach making my own art.
h
I am not unaware of art. But I think of it (au contrare) as being the most indulgent and egoistic of mankind's pursuits, not the most ethical.
Here's something about another artist. In John Lydon's words...I may be right, I may be wrong...
https://independentaustralia.net/life/art-display/gauguins-paedophilic-legacy-raises-debate-over-exhibit,18758
Hi Herb. See the comments above about Jonathan Richman and Picasso. It's just a line from a song really. I don't profess to know anything at all about Picasso in reality. However, it has become an almost unassailable belief in art circles where I come from that he was strongly mysoginist. Regret that it's not such a big deal for me that I will seek out the reference book you mention. I just have to allocate time to projects according to priorities these days. I consider myself cautioned to not assume the loud majority are correct about the man
Hi Jason,
I have -- twice now. Your description of the music and assessment of it as a "wild ride" certainly fits. There is a lot going on in this music and it is super fun. Thanks for introducing it. Honestly, I might never otherwise have paid it any mind; Danny Elfman is not a favorite movie composer of mine. That would have been my loss.
Peace, Monty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOYU99ME7Cc
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