Music Composed by Tan Dun
Rating: ****

In the past, I’ve sort of felt that there have been two Tan Duns. In the film music world, we’ve had Tan Dun, the composer of the enormously popular Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the romantic East-meets-West score with a great deal of crossover appeal. In the classical community, we’ve had Tan Dun, the groundbreaking composer of some of the most brazenly avant-garde (but strangely beautiful) operas, oratorios, and concert pieces of the past two decades. When Dun followed Crouching Tiger with a virtually identical score for Hero, it seemed like his concert and his film careers would stay permanently grafted at their opposite poles (though I do make this statement with zero knowledge of Dun’s other film scores). With The Banquet, however, the two Tan Duns finally seem to have merged. Here, Dun has crafted a piece of music that echoes the wild experimentation of his concert work without abandoning the more accessible romantic grounding that makes him so popular as a film composer.

Tan Dun

Crouching Tiger and Hero both featured star performers headlining the orchestra (Yo-yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, respectively), and Dun continues this trend here by writing substantial material for famed pianist Lang Lang. And to be honest, Dun writes more daring and challenging work for Lang than he ever did for Ma and Perlman, turning the score into a contemporary concerto for piano and orchestra (with numerous augmentations by traditional Chinese instruments). You’ll hear the first evidence in “In the Bamboo Forest,” a breathlessly inventive piece for piano, traditional Chinese percussion, and deep male chorus. Dun gives Lang a workout here, weaving the piano through low-end percussive effects into odd hybrids of classical/jazz idioms. Mix Crouching Tiger’s “Night Fight,” Goldsmith’s Planet of the Apes, and Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo A La Turk” together, and you’ll get the idea of what Dun does with this music. While not as avant-garde something like Ghost Opera, the piece draws a similarly thrilling clash of Chinese and Western music idioms.

It’s also a rare treat to hear a piece of film music that features every part so firmly grounded in the lower octaves. To that end, “Sword Dance” plays like mirror reflection of “In the Bamboo Forest,” transposing the first piece’s low register ideas into the higher octaves. Here, Lang darts about the upper keys of the piano while racing strings augment the percussion. A beautiful feeling of symmetry keeps the score in balance even when Dun’s radical ideas seem to fly past in every direction.

A love theme also plays a significant role, and frequently draws the score closer to the romantic territory that Western film music listeners love Dun for. It gets a painfully cheesy pop song treatment in “Only for Love” (one of the few features from his early film work that I could do without), but the theme opens up more when Dun passes it over to Lang and the orchestra. It still maintains a sense of gushy romance in cues like “Lost Days,” but it runs through some surprising variations elsewhere. In turns, the theme becomes a sharp, neo-classical scherzo (“Desire”), a painfully guttural vocalize for male soloist (“Longing in Silence”), and an eerily dissonant piece for brass and solo flute (“Revenge”).

But perhaps it takes on its strongest emotional contours in the climatic “Play Within a Play.” After a brief prelude of restrained traditional percussion, the theme writhes in an anguished string arrangement that will leave you emotionally drained. But you’ll be restored by the closing piece, the titular “The Banquet.” The cue opens with a stark solo piano rendition of the love theme, but soon the orchestra and choir take off with the music and deliver a thrilling and uplifting finale that John Williams himself would be proud of. It’s a riveting finish, and a belated highlight for film music in 2006.

The same goes for the score. For whatever reason, The Banquet went unnoticed in last year’s film music circuit, but hopefully this will change soon. This is not a score for everyone, and anyone expecting another retread of the Crouching Tiger material may be at a bit of a loss, but its daring, thrilling, and moving music that flies in the face of the mediocrity Hollywood keeps shoveling out. It’s also one of the most genuine unions of Eastern and Western music forms that you’ll ever hear in a movie. Don’t miss it.

Music Composed and Conducted by Tan Dun; Piano Solos performed by Lang Lang; Orchestra, Chorus and Percussion Ensemble Recorded and Mixed by Lu Xiao Xing; Label: Deutsche Grammophon, (6459); Availability: In-print; U.S. Release Date: September 14, 2006.

01. Only For Love (Theme Song) (5:23)
Original Chinese lyrics by Fan Yue Yi
Translation by Carolyn Choa and Aventurina King
02. Waiting (2:06)
03. In the Bamboo Forest (4:08)
04. Longing In Silence (woman) (2:15)
Original Chinese lyrics by Sheng He Yu
Translation by Carolyn Choa
05. Behind The Mask (1:45)
06. Sword Dance (1:51)
07. Punished Soul (1:39)
08. Lost Days (2:09)
09. Desire (1:14)
10. Exile to Snow West (2:19)
11. Longing in Silence (man) (4:20)
Original Chinese lyrics by Sheng He Yu
Translation by Carolyn Choa
12. A Duel of Minds (1:33)
13. Bridge of Sacrifice (3:20)
14. Horseman In Black (2:32)
15. After Tonight (2:35)
16. Lady in Red (2:05)
17. Revenge (1:44)
18. Play Within a Play (4:12)
19. The Banquet (Theme Music) (3:36)

Total Running Time: 50:46