For many, the focal point of the Pangaea Entertainment Antarctic trilogy will be a complete performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 7, Sinfonia Antartica. The misspelling comes about from the composer’s use of the Italian title. The music started out as a score for the 1948 movie, Scott of the Antarctic, which starred John Mills as the intrepid explorer. Vaughan Williams became so involved with his composition that he decided to fashion its themes into a symphonic work for performance in the concert hall. As such, the Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli conducting, first played the Sinfonia Antartica in 1953. It is scored for a huge orchestra, including, in addition to the usual strings, woodwind and brass: organ, piano, celesta, glockenspiel, vibraphone, bells, a women’s wordless chorus, and wordless soprano solo. In viewing this compliment, one can easily see that the composer was into combinations that would produce "chilly" sounds to evoke the broad, frozen expanse of the Earth’s coldest continent.

Pangaea’s producers have chosen to put this music, which originally accompanied a film, with a combination of historic footage and newly shot panoramas, including some amazing underwater footage of penguins gracefully swimming in opposition to their usual awkward image on foot. All the images match the music very carefully, so much so that it often seems as if the music was specifically composed to go with this movie, rather than with the original biography for which it is was intended. Each of the work’s five movements is preceded by a literary superscription. These are shown on screen so the listener can read them, as the composer intended. Unfortunately, they are accompanied by whistling wind on the soundtrack, the producers no doubt fearing to use absolute silence, which would have been more effective; a small fly in an otherwise first-rate ointment.

The performance is by the superb New Zealand Symphony, conducted by James Judd. Deborah Wai Kepohe is the soprano soloist. The orchestra plays as well as any that has recorded this gargantuan piece, and Judd fully understands the music’s ever-changing moods. The recording is very good for a compressed delivery method (Dolby Digital), with an excellent front soundstage, and just the right amount of surround to produce a live feeling. The bass is always solid and impressive, though the organ, used to such great effect in the "Landscape" movement, seems a bit understated and distant. Since this is a movie, and we are used to sound manipulation in the medium, it might have been effective to make the solo soprano sound a bit more disembodied than she does. However these are small gripes. Overall, this is a sound recording far above average for a DVD-Video release, and the video and audio marry way above other wannabe unions. If one must make program music into music video, it should be done this way.

...Rad Bennett
radb@hometheatersound.com