The Wings of A Film: The Music of Hans Zimmer

by William Ruhlmann This is an album of excerpts from Hans Zimmer's film scores, performed at a concert at the Flanders International Film Festival by Zimmer with the VRO Flemish Radio Orchestra conducted by Dirk Brossé and featuring many guest soloists. Zimmer, a German-born veteran of the 1970s and '80s British rock scene (he was a member of the Buggles of "Video Killed the Radio Star" fame), broke into film scoring in the early '80s, and by late in the decade had become a prolific A list movie composer, eventually taking home an Oscar for The Lion King. He is responsible for dragging film composing into the synthesizer and computer era, but is equally capable of writing sweeping orchestral music, as is apparent here in the orchestra's performances of portions of his scores for Gladiator, Nine Months, and True Romance. Still, his most characteristic writing may be his minimalist work on Rain Man, which brought him his first Academy Award nomination, and which he performs here. His work on The Lion King, here featuring co-composer Lebo M, seems less impressive in retrospect, a pale imitation of South African mbaqanga music, though it certainly worked well in the film and on the Broadway stage. The music from Driving Miss Daisy remains attractive and melodic, even if one is reminded that it was noticeably anachronistic in the film itself. But perhaps a real sense of Zimmer's roots is provided in "Thunderbird" from Thelma & Louise, an orchestral setting for an extended electric guitar solo played by Pete Haycock, which is drenched in British progressive rock and sounds like it could have come from a Pink Floyd album. The excerpts add up to a clear portrait of a musician with the versatility and talent to be what he is: one of the world's top film composers.