Novecento (1900)

AMG Review of Novecento (1900)

Jason Ankeny
All Music Guide

With his score to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1976 historical epic Novecento, Ennio Morricone delivered one of the richest efforts of his legendary career. A sweeping and impressively variegated work, it manages to capture the period detail required to complement Bertoluccio's onscreen narrative, yet boasts a timelessness that's the hallmark of all the composer's masterpieces. Morricone's mastery of mood and texture reaches new zeniths here. Novecento communicates a vast emotional palette that extends from soaring joy (the beautiful piano theme "Tema di Ada") to searing tension (the atonal "Autunno-1922"), all crafted with uncommon complexity. Most impressive of all is the opening "Romanzo," which builds from intimate clarinet to orchestral bombast in quintessential Morricone fashion.