“Film music is the heart and soul of every film,” said James Cameron, director of such well-known films as Terminator or Titanic. But applied music, as it is called to distinguish it from purposeless, so-called absolute music, seems to have broken away from its close connection to film for a long time.
Pieces by the world-famous John Williams are performed everywhere in concert halls without the moving image, listeners listen to the new score of their favorite composer without knowing the accompanying film, and the harmony and tonality of newer films are making their way into popular music again and again. So it is only logical that Hans Zimmer, who has shaped the film music landscape like no other in recent decades, has been touring regularly since 2016, which brought him to Frankfurt am Main at the end of April.
spectacle There, the sold-out Festhalle stares in anticipation at what may come next, when suddenly the lights go out and the singer Loire Cotler enters the stage. Melancholic-dreamy singing sounds before a powerful beat on a big drum opens the spectacle.
The curtain rises and reveals a whole host of musicians: a bagpipe ensemble, strings, woodwinds and brass, along with a number of solo instrumentalists ranging from modular synthesizers to violins and cellos to bass, guitar and two female drummers. And right in the middle, quite inconspicuously, the composer himself.
“I’m getting older, you’re always more beautiful!” he calls out to the crowd.
Welcome to the world of Hans Zimmer. Somewhere in the audience a woman says »Like in the cinema« and, strictly speaking, the following evening is of course bigger than the cinema itself. The screen, which changes constantly, evokes memories of the respective films, but the music as an event offers that what cinema once distinguished: being »larger than life«. Virtuoso musicians, a perfectly coordinated light show, a precisely balanced dynamic of quiet and loud sections that want to evoke emotional highs.
FRACK After the first two tracks from the movies Dune and Inception the Oscar winner greets the audience to frenetic applause. Zimmer, who despite his tails (with jeans) comes across as approachable and casual, is a charmer of the old school: “I’m getting older, you’re always more beautiful!” Hall lit.
For Hans Zimmer it is a home game in the truest sense of the word: he was born in Frankfurt in 1957 and grew up in nearby Königstein. The student, who was considered undisciplined, was expelled from several schools and finally did his Abitur in England.
From the 1970s, the self-taught musician played synthesizers in various bands, including The Buggles, in whose world-famous music video »Video Killed the Radio Star« he can be seen playing the keyboard. Via the detour of radio and advertising jingles, Zimmer finally came to film music – in 1988 his soundtrack closed him Rain Man world famous.
LANGUAGE At the concert, Hans Zimmer apologizes for his somewhat rusty German – “but maybe that’s a good thing,” he adds ambiguously. His relationship with Germany is strange, the composer explained at the 1999 Berlinale press conference on the film The last days, which tells the story of five Auschwitz survivors. Here, for the first time, the world learned from Hans Zimmer that his Jewish mother herself had fled from the Nazis to England in 1939.
The musical autodidact was born in Frankfurt and grew up in Königstein.
In later interviews, Zimmer revealed that the second he came out, he was afraid of an anti-Semitic backlash, but then suddenly the Auschwitz survivor Renée Firestone, who was sitting next to him at the press conference, took his hand in hers without a word.
His film music, which repeatedly explored new possibilities of the genre, could thus be ranked in a ranks of Jewish composers who, from the beginnings of sound films from Max Steiner and Erich Korngold, through Bernard Herrmann and Jerry Goldsmith to James Horner and Danny Elfman, decisively shaped the genre.
Focus Back in the Festhalle, the bombastic as well as cinematic celebration of music increasingly turns into one of its musicians. Hans Zimmer, who apparently does not like being the center of attention himself and prefers to accompany his ensemble on piano, bass and synthesizers, repeatedly emphasizes individual instrumentalists, praises their skills and talent and leaves no doubt about how much he appreciates them.
And of course all well-known hits by Lion King above pirates of the Caribbean bis The Last Samurai and Interstellar played, the individual pieces of which the composer wove into small suites. The extremely mixed audience – young and old, chic and casual – leaves the hall after two encores with a blissful look on their faces. The expression is reminiscent of children’s eyes who have just attended a spectacular magic show.
Further concerts by Hans Zimmer in Germany are planned in Hanover (May 20), Munich (May 24), Berlin (May 26/27), Hamburg (May 28) and Cologne (June 9).
2023-05-04 10:53:36
#home #game
