Music From The Motion Picture Beowulf Beowulf Soundtrack CD

Personnel: Idina Menzel (vocals); Glen Ballard (guitar, keyboards, programming); Tim Pierce (guitar); Blair Sinta (drums).
Audio Mixer: Dennis Sands.
Recording information: The High Window, Hollywood CA; Todd Ao Scoring Stage.
For his 2007 computer-animated take on the ancient tale of BEOWULF, director Robert Zemeckis once again opted to work with frequent collaborator Alan Silvestri. With his horn-and-percussion-heavy compositions (see the tense "Second Grendel Attack"), Silvestri captures the epic scale of the movie, allowing its more reflective moments to be voiced by Robin Wright-Penn and Idina Menzel in their respectively spare and sweeping versions of "A Hero Comes Home."
Alan Silvestri has scored many of director Robert Zemeckis' films, which have spanned genres, their most consistent theme being cinematic innovation. Beowulf is one of the several films of the early 21st century that were hybrids of live action and animation, but perhaps more important for purposes of the score is that it is, of course, a medieval tale of monster fighting based on the ancient epic poem. That obliges Silvestri to write lots of music expressing violence and foreboding, with plenty of tympani (or drum programming) and choirs soaring in wordless apprehension. The action clearly lets up here and there, however, enough for actress Robin Wright Penn to get to carefully sing a couple of period ballads, "Gently as She Goes" and the more anthemic "A Hero Comes Home" (later given an even more bravura reading by Idina Menzel in a clear play for Oscar consideration). Silvestri actually does better with the softer passages, particularly "I Am Beowulf," a big romantic theme. But such cues are only interludes in a score that must support the outsized battle sequences primarily. ~ William Ruhlmann