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RENAISSANCE – Nicholas Dodd
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
To the outsider, the relationship between the composer and the orchestrator is a strange, symbiotic, largely misunderstood affair. Composers, who are ultimately responsible for the majority of the sound of their own work, pass off their musical outlines to others for “fleshing out” for a variety of reasons, time pressure being the most frequently cited. A seasoned composer like John Williams, whose recent scores have been orchestrated by John Neufeld and Eddie Karam, will hand over manuscripts which are 99% complete in detail, leaving the orchestrators with little to do other than write it out neatly and prepare it for copying. Others, on the other hand, will have little more than a melodic line written out, and it will be up to the orchestrator to convert this simple tune into something which can be played by a large symphony orchestra. It is in these circumstances that the influence of the orchestrator becomes apparent: he or she will add a great deal of their own musical personality to scores which are not yet fully realised, and depending on how successful the composer is, the familiar touch of a particular orchestrator can be heard, sometimes above that of the actual composer. Over the years, a great number of orchestrators have left their mark, from early pioneers like Hugo Friedhofer, through Alexander Courage and Arthur Morton and Grieg McRitchie, to today’s top talents like Mark McKenzie, Robert Elhai, Brad Dechter and Conrad Pope. Arguably the most identifiable of the current crop, however, is Nicholas Dodd. Read more…
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