Nobody Plays It Better: James Bond Music Shakes and Stirs Carnegie Hall

When you think about the long-running James Bond film series, the first thing that hits you is not the character of the superspy himself, but the music. After all half a dozen actors have portrayed Bond over the last 60-plus years, with another one to be announced soon, but the central James Bond theme, composed by Monty Norman for the first entry, “Dr. No” (1962), has remained constant. As Steven Reineke, conductor and music director of the New York Pops, announced in the middle of the first act of Friday’s concert at Carnegie Hall, there’s more excitement building over who is going to write and/or sing the title song for the next movie, whatever or whenever it is, than over which actor will be playing Bond. Some of us are more interested in whoever the next “Bond girl” will be, but maybe that’s just me.Friday’s concert, “007: James Bond Forever,” conceived by the singer-actress Lena Hall, offered 19 selections drawn from the franchise. Roughly half featured Ms. Hall, and the rest were instrumentals by the orchestra. The show, which christened the orchestra’s 44th season, began as Bond movies traditionally do, with that unmistakable Monty Norman theme, centered around a guitar playing a distinctive, frantic solo against a blaring brass section. (The original guitarist had the improbable but appropriate name of Vic Flick, so help me.) The contrast between the lower register of the guitar and the stratospheric high notes of the trumpets gives the theme its momentum: This is the sonic equivalent of Technicolor. For my part, I thought that Mr. Reineke was playing it a mite too slowly; such are the decisions a conductor can make, but I didn’t mind, since it prolonged the audio bliss of Norman’s melody, as definitively arranged by John Barry.Ms. Hall was vivacious and chatty; like the scripts of the films themselves, neither she nor Mr. Reineke took anything too seriously. She paraded forth in a series of colorful, revealing outfits and continually cracked jokes at her own expense. Kidding aside, Ms. Hall would make a great Bond girl herself, despite a few ad-libs about menopause. In fact, a lot of us older Bond boys would like to see Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (most recently embodied by Daniel Craig, who was 53 when the latest entry, “No Time to Die,” was released) play opposite a 45-year-old leading lady.Ms. Hall drew a distinction between two types of Bond theme. First, there are the bombastic, testosterone-driven pieces, mostly from the 1960s, like John Barry’s “Thunderball” and “Goldfinger.” Then there are the romantic songs of the 1970s and early 1980s, like “For Your Eyes Only” and Marvin Hamlisch’s “Nobody Does It Better.” In fact, Barry’s “You Only Live Twice” belongs in this group even though it’s from 1967. The Roger Moore-era themes are more yin than yang, perhaps because Moore was a conventional heartthrob rather than the earthy original Bond of the 1960s, Sean Connery. One reason the Daniel Craig films have so resonated with longtime fans is that he comes closest to recapturing Connery’s gravity.Lena Hall, Steven Reineke, and the New York Pops performing at ‘007: James Bond Forever.’ Jenny AndersonAt one point, Ms. Hall quizzed the audience as to their favorite Bond actor. There was, not surprisingly, an almost deafening cry of “Sean Connery!” Only Mr. Reineke confessed to a preference for George “one-and-done” Lazenby, who played the lead in a single entry, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” The conductor wasn’t merely being amusing; that 1969 entry boasts an exceptional score. Mr. Reineke and the Pops essayed the instrumental main-title theme, but I was chagrined that they passed over the mid-film love theme, “We Have All the Time in the World.” As sung by Louis Armstrong, in one of his final recordings, this remains one of the great musical treasures of the franchise, as the producers confirmed when they reprised it over the end titles of “No Time to Die.”I confess to a preference for the pre-1980 themes: Garbage and Duran Duran seem like a serious step down from Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, and Louis Armstrong. Even so, I have to acknowledge that Ms. Hall and the Pops made “A View to a Kill” and “The World Is Not Enough” sound better at Carnegie than they do in the films themselves. (Even more than most Pops concerts, this, like their excellent Cole Porter program last year, should become an album.)The Carnegie playbill announced that the concert would end with the best Bond theme of recent decades, Adele’s “Skyfall.” Somehow, “Goldfinger,” perhaps the most iconic of Bond themes, was not on the printed song list. However, Ms. Hall and Mr. Reineke pulled a Bond-like switcheroo when they encored with that classic 1964 theme. Everyone in the house was on their feet and cheering. Collectively we were all in agreement that we wanted less Garbage and more “Goldfinger.”

Nobody Plays It Better: James Bond Music Shakes and Stirs Carnegie Hall

Nobody Plays It Better: James Bond Music Shakes and Stirs Carnegie Hall

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