(Enja)
Rabih Abou-Khalil, the Beirut-born oud player, has always had an affection for the incongruous, and his own genre-mashing bands are exhilarating mavericks. This is a different story. Some might be intrigued by the historical context: a brief episode of Judeo-Christian-Islamic harmony from the Third Crusades celebrated in the 1922 German silent film Nathan the Wise, and rekindled by Abou-Khalil's TV-commissioned symphonic score for that movie. Abou-Khalil plays incisively over Michel Godard's huffing tuba and Jarrod Cagwin's rattlesnake drum sounds on Jerusalem. The entwining motifs for flute and oboe over the rhythmic chime of the oud, and the latter's edgy presence between orchestral surges on Gerusalemme Liberata, are effective. Typical Abou-Khalil themes mingle European folk melodies and Arab rhythms, but, aside from the tailchasing motifs on Once Upon a Dervish (which sounds like an Elmer Bernstein western score for a Middle-Eastern rhythm section), much of the ensemble music sounds portentous, and the composer's usual exuberant spontaneity,...
Rabih Abou-Khalil, the Beirut-born oud player, has always had an affection for the incongruous, and his own genre-mashing bands are exhilarating mavericks. This is a different story. Some might be intrigued by the historical context: a brief episode of Judeo-Christian-Islamic harmony from the Third Crusades celebrated in the 1922 German silent film Nathan the Wise, and rekindled by Abou-Khalil's TV-commissioned symphonic score for that movie. Abou-Khalil plays incisively over Michel Godard's huffing tuba and Jarrod Cagwin's rattlesnake drum sounds on Jerusalem. The entwining motifs for flute and oboe over the rhythmic chime of the oud, and the latter's edgy presence between orchestral surges on Gerusalemme Liberata, are effective. Typical Abou-Khalil themes mingle European folk melodies and Arab rhythms, but, aside from the tailchasing motifs on Once Upon a Dervish (which sounds like an Elmer Bernstein western score for a Middle-Eastern rhythm section), much of the ensemble music sounds portentous, and the composer's usual exuberant spontaneity,...
- 1/7/2011
- by John Fordham
- The Guardian - Film News
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