Han(d)s down Hans Zimmer is my favourite soundtrack composer (bar John Williams obvs), but I found many of the track choices on this album bewildering.
The World Of Hans Zimmer – A Symphonic Celebration is a collection of concert works, though the recording quality is so good you only really reminded of that by the occasional round of applause that pops up.
Zimmer has a wealth of film scores to choose from and he seems determined to work his way through as many as possible on this two-hour record.
Yet despite the length, not enough time was spent on some of his more accomplished works. The entire Dark Knight trilogy was dealt with in the first six minutes and his utterly brilliant work on Inception was limited to a four-minute rendition of the beautiful Time.
By comparison, Zimmer spends 20-plus minutes working his way through elements of the rather pedestrian soundtrack to The Da Vinci Code. There was also a rather overlong tribute to his work on Mission: Impossible 2.
Other odd inclusions were tracks from Madagascar, The Holiday, and Pearl Harbour – as if anyone needs reminding of that abomination of a film, ever.
There was a decent amount of time covering Gladiator and the album finishes off with the rousing theme from Pirates of the Caribbean. Unfortunately by that point I was pretty hacked off with what had come before, excluding a couple of brilliant moments.
Zimmer is a hugely talented composer, but I don’t feel this album reflects that particularly well. Feel free to cherry pick the best moments from it – in reality this could have been easily cut down to half an hour and you wouldn’t have been any worse off.
Release date: 15 March 2019
Rating: 5.5/10
Standout track: Inception: Time
For fans of:
- John Williams
- Danny Elfman
- Howard Shore
The Album Review 