I must admit that the thought of reviewing Red River has filled me with not a small amount of dread. I can't say I've ever been grabbed by anything I've heard from Dimitri Tiomkin and this is supposedly one of his best and most famous efforts, make or break time for me liking his music. The film itself is widely regarded as a classic western and one of John Wayne's finest roles. Needless to say, I've not seen it, westerns not really being my thing at the best of times. I can at least be gratified in the fact that Red River doesn't have one of those godawful songs that Tiomkin wrote for many of his later westerns, when producers suddenly realised the value in a hit record. Yes, we have Tiomkin to thank for the spinoff song, but not here.
The liner notes make much of Tiomkin being asked how a Russian composer could conjure up the American west and he replied along the lines that the sweeping American landscape was the same as it was in his homeland. Although it sounds like a quintessential western score today, it certainly isn't influenced by the great American composers, there's certainly no Copland here. Having said that, only a few moments really bely Tiomkin's Russian origins, most notably the male chorus that contributes from time to time, but a few of the purely orchestral tracks have a hint of Shostakovich in darker, bustling mode. One of Tiomkin's trademarks is the busyness of his orchestrations and there are few let ups in the density of sound. I would be inclined to say the music is intense, but often it pours over from dramatic, to melodramatic and the results are unexpectedly amusing to the contemporary listener.
I'd like to think that my reviews are useful, but in the case of Red River I have to resign myself that I'm not sure I can provide especially useful commentary. Tiomkin's music is very good, it is tuneful, generally dramatic in the right places and never dull. William Stromberg, as ever, gets a fine, idiomatic performance from the Russian musicians (how could they not relish playing the music of one of their countrymen?), the sound is excellent and the liner notes are some of the most detailed I've ever read. However, for all that, I just couldn't connect to the music and the bustling orchestration and melodrama became rather tiring by the end. Of course, this is an essential for Tiomkin fans and probably as good a place as to start a Tiomkin collection.
Due to legal problems regarding the use of images from the film, the album may well be hard to find in North America, but copyright rules elsewhere are different and so should be easy to find elsewhere.