LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY: OCTOBER 13

...From the new recording were the complex rhythmic games of Carlos Rivera's Cumba-Quin--with the composer present for a well-deserved bow--...

The score for the show was composed by Carlos Rafael Rivera and it was pretty f*$#% great.

Come for the top-shelf talent involved, stay for the lead performances, crisp photography, and lovely music (courtesy of T Bone Burnett and Carlos Rafael Rivera).

The Queen’s Gambit has one of the most significant soundtracks in recent memory. Composer Carlos Rafael Rivera’s music is tender and melancholic for the most part. The piano and strings nurse Beth Harmon, a fictional chess prodigy who strives to be the world’s best player in the 1960s. Most background scores reveal the rhythm of the scene or the mood of the characters. But this score reacts to Beth like a companion, as if she were a dazzling silent film in need of a voice. Or a religion in need of context. It’s almost…protective of her. But towards the end of the seven-part miniseries, the score morphs into a “main theme”. This theme triggers the end-credit montage. It’s rousing and playful at once – think the title theme of Catch Me If You Can but sharper – which implies that the superpower is psychological rather than physical. It’s the melody of outwitting, outsmarting, outmanouvering. That’s when it becomes clear: this is the sound of a Superhero origin story.

https://www.filmcompanion.in/streaming/netflix/the-queens-gambit-review-netflix-is-a-thrilling-revisionist-ode-to-the-worlds-foremost-mental-sport-anya-taylor-joy-rahul-desai/

Even after six chapters, it’s testament to how good it all looks – and how evocative Carlos Rafael Rivera’s score is – that you’ll never skip the opening credits.

Prominent in the first scene was a buzzing effect in the strings, and in the sober second a clarinet solo. The work ends with motoric and assertive music that recalls Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” The performance was warmly received and Rivera was present to take a bow.

This is a charming, relatively lightweight concerto, with plenty of attractive melody and color, and its appeal to the Knight Concert Hall audience, which applauded it enthusiastically, is clear.

Yet, as Frank is a genuinely top screenwriter, the dialogue is choice, and Neeson is compelling as the protagonist, credible and authoritative in a way few Hollywood leading men could ever be. Possibly even better is Carlos Rafael Rivera’s moody score.

Composer Carlos Rafael Rivera layered a silky yet haunting string melody over the gritty images created by Method Studios, giving the Netflix drama a flair reminiscent of its premium channel competitors.

The score for Godless is really excellent. It’s credited to composer Carlos Rafael Rivera, who previously did the score for another Scott Frank project, the Liam Neeson vehicle A Walk Among the Tombstones.

…exposed the nostalgia, sorrow, and hope that characterize music from the folkloric tradition of the Sephardic Jews.

Pero de los estrenos, el mas aplaudido fue la Pizzi-Cuban Polka, en la que la famosa obra Pizzicato Polka, de Johan Strauss, con su distintivo pizzicato, cobro vuelos de danzón-salsa a golpe de claves, maracas y tumbadoras.