By AC115521
14-Jul-2012

Berlin, Die Sinfonie  

Conductor Frank Strobel certainly deserves credit for resuscitating this score. Just as they embraced Strobel’s recording of Metropolis, ardent students of film music will appreciate the significance of Meisel’s work.

The score per se is unrelenting in its dissonance and metric irregularity, the perfect analog of Rittman’s film vision. Despite the passionate advocacy of the conductor et al, the result is not an unqualified success. Meisel’s writing is too interlinked with the film’s cutting and imagery to stand on its own independent of the visual element. Nevertheless this is worth investigating if only for its cultural importance. Good packaging and informative, albeit, syntactically labored liner notes.
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