THE ONE & ONLY

GABRIEL YARED

Rating:

Original Review: Think of Gabriel Yared, and you would probably automatically think of the lush strings, high dramatics and gut-wrenching melodies heard in scores such as City of Angels, Message in a Bottle and the Oscar-winning The English Patient. The French/Lebanese composer has made a profitable, and successful, Hollywood career scoring cinematic tear-jerkers and heartbreakers in this manner, which makes his work here all the more unexpected - a) because it's a million miles removed from that style of scoring and, b) because on the whole, its awful.

The One & Only is a remake of the 1999 film Den Eneste Ene, transposed from Denmark to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in northeastern England. Starring Richard Roxburgh, Justine Waddell, Jonathan Cake and Patsy Kensit, and directed by Simon Cellan-Jones, the film is a fairly lowbrow romantic comedy about Neil (Roxburgh) and Stevie (Waddell), two people who meet and fall in love when one comes to install the other's new kitchen. Trying to break out of their already doomed relationship - hers to a narcissistic Italian soccer star, his to a woman intent on adopting an African orphan girl.

Basically, the score is made up of variations of a single theme, first heard in the opening track. Broadly, one could describe it as a fast-paced, frenzied collision of percussion, fiddles, accordions and stand-up bass, quite unlike anything I have heard before. I suppose it has vaguely Brazilian, or possibly Mediterranean overtones, and is performed by a group of musicians under the collective banner "Taraf de Hardoukis", the members of which all have Romanian surnames, but seem to operate out of Belgium. It goes through several permutations - a samba-styled elevator music version in track 4, with a massively speeded-up beat in track 9, with electric guitars in track 10, and in a slower guitar/saxophone guise in Track 16 - although, sadly, none of these are particularly outstanding.

It's not often I use this verb, but the music in The One & Only is actually rather ugly. I'm sure that, in a traditional sense, and in terms of authentic instrumentation, it is both accurate and appropriate, but the bottom line when it comes to music is that you have to actually enjoy listening to it... and, sad to say, I don't. It's rare that scores actually cause me to wrinkle my nose in auditory disgust, but several of the cues on The One & Only elicited this reaction in me. 'Stan, The Van!', for instance, is a hideous collision of accordions and stand-up bass, with a Romany-inspired fiddle solo playing over the top. Not bad, you may say... but the music seems so un-focused and un-structured that it almost becomes unlistenable.

The only real tracks of note are the slower ones, notably 'Angel of the North' is more traditionally "Yaredian", with a sentimental, music-hall style piano melody; and 'The Wedding', with an upbeat and modern saxophone solo and the addition of pealing bells. In addition to this, a couple of the songs are actually rather good: a performance of 'Tonight, I Celebrate My Love' by Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson, which was a big hit when it was first released in 1983; 'A Loop in Time' by Wally Brill is intriguing, being an opera track overlaid with a pulsating modern beat - and of course Giuseppe Verdi is always acceptable, with the classic Anvil Chorus from "Il Trovatore".

I don't get a great deal of satisfaction writing reviews like this, because I know how much talent and dedication it takes to reach the top of the film score ladder, and how much work and attention to detail it takes to get each and every score finished. Nevertheless, I still feel that The One & Only is a lacklustre work from a composer whose back catalogue has impressed me greatly. It rates high on the innovation scale, but low on the enjoyment one.

Track Listing: Running Time: 61 minutes 35 seconds

Sony Classical SK-87717 (2003)

Music composed and conducted by Gabriel Yared. Orchestrations by Gabriel Yared. Featured musical soloists Ionel Manole, Marin Manole, Constantine Lautaru, Anghel Gheorghe, Christinel Turturica, Ion Tanase, Stephane Karo, Chris Baker, Neil Claxton, Chris Cawte and Rolf Wilson. Recorded and mixed by Peter Cobbin. Edited by Kirsty Whalley and Allen Jenkins. Mastered by Peter Mew. Album produced by Gabriel Yared.

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