Sven Helbig
Pocket Symphonies
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 481 039-8 CD (2013)
Please forgive my carping tone here, but it is so tempting to write about something completely unrelated in preference to the music on this record as unfortunately, for me, it is an entirely missable collection of insipid concoctions designed to play on the emotions of the unwary in a most transparent way. Sorry about that. Helbig has previously arranged orchestrations for The Pet Shop Boys and I think it shows. This is no criticism of either The Pet Shop Boys or Helbig himself but if you are not in the market for some cloying populist pseudo-grandeur then you should give this disc a wide berth.
Track one, “Gone”, is florid, short duration film music-lite of the type that has become popular in films within European cinema featuring someone easy on the eye like Audrey Tatou. The material is saccharine; that it plays too easily on the heartstrings and emotions of the casual listener is deliberate and an achievement and, in a way commendable, but for me it quickly becomes insufferable. Music for those for whom cinema exists to allow them to feel emotion that they would otherwise be incapable of. The second track, “Frost”, is a perfect cinematic world of period drama where every musical theme employed by the composer is logically, theoretically and predictably resolved and nothing is left to the imagination. “Am Abend”, the next victual, sounds like a nursery rhyme, according to my wife. For me it’s loaded with far too many flourishes and pseudo-grand gestures.
The next track inexplicably goes all Christmassy at 2 minutes 30 seconds. I was once working in a recording studio when someone suggested the addition of sleigh bells to an otherwise perfectly harmless piece of music. The suggestion was that it would appeal to the latent Christmas present buyer in everyone. I countered with the conviction that such a pointless suggestion smacked not only of a lack of imagination but also signified a ruthless attitude to commercial interests to the detriment of the creative process itself, but then that’s just me. But my attitude led to my eventual expulsion from that particular project. But did I learn? I mean cockroaches just get on with their business – don’t they? They’re impervious.
This is music for the rest homes of the future. Like Val Doonican and Perry Como lps – they can make your gran feel better, these aural tranquilisers. But can you, Sven Helbig? Can you? Whatever I think, apart from miscellaneous film soundtrack contracts in the pipeline for Mr Helbig, I’m sure BBC Drama will be using some of this as idents for their autumn scheduling this autumn, so he should do well. I’m sure he’s in a Mercedes showroom trying to make a decision between the SL and the SLK on the back of it as I type. Another world.