Sound Check — Geoff Carter: William Orbit’s ‘Pieces in a Modern Style’ takes flight

Friday, Feb. 25, 2000 | 8:49 a.m.

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at carter@ vegas.com

Just 25 years ago -- in the Year of Our Ford, 1975 -- the listening public believed that the act of playing classical compositions on synthesizers was a progressive idea whose time had come. For the record, we also believed in Bigfoot, the gold standard and eight-track tapes. Bob Guccione believed that "Caligula" had Oscar potential.

Walter/Wendy Carlos and Isao Tomita built careers around our fascination with classical gas (burp). They filtered the classical repertoire through Moogs and vocoders and Darth Vader's helmet; the results were surprising (Tomitas' delicate handing of Debussy's "Arabesque No. 1") at one pole, repugnant (Carlos' chirpy "Switched-On Bach") at the other. And we still had "Hooked on Classics" to get through.

I wouldn't have expected William Orbit to visit that wreckage, but after hearing "Pieces in a Modern Style," I'm glad he did. The producer/composer -- best known for his work with Madonna -- is widely respected within his field for a good reason: He never lays it on too thick. If Madonna wants to vamp, that's her business; Orbit is there simply to keep the music out of her way.

Pushed to the front of the mix, Orbit takes on a restrained ardor. His previous solo records, all titled "Strange Cargo" (he differentiates them with numbers), are almost danceable, almost meditative, almost neither of the two.

No such split personality afflicts "Pieces" -- it's as far from dance music as you can get, and all meant to be played in quiet darkness. What you do in that darkness is your business; you can rest assured that Orbit will stay out of your way.

Mostly. Orbit's take on Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," played not on a Moog but likely on a smallish rack of electronics that would have taken up two rooms in Carlos' day, handles the beautifully spiritual composition so faithfully that one wonders why Orbit bothered to transpose it at all. Electronic or symphonic, the piece truly affects.

It's almost enough to make up for the compositions he mishandles. An unnecessary helicopter sound mars what is otherwise an imaginative interpretation of Erik Satie's "Ogive Number 1." The opening notes of Pietro Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" glow like distant stars, but the tranquility is short-lived -- a Tomita-esque wah-wah is introduced, dimming the heavens with candy-colored spotlights.

That's not to say "Pieces" isn't an entertaining program of deconstruction. Orbit twists Ludwig van Beethoven's "Triple Concerto" into a shape that even Carlos dare not have attempted; it's loyal to the spirit of the composition, while being kinky enough to scare Stanley Kubrick out of the afterlife. A "Clockwork Orange," indeed.

"Xerxes" fares even better. The romantic Largo from George Fredric Handel's opera is re-imagined as something a bit more grandiose than two ships passing in the night. You're not thinking of the synthesizers, or of Madonna, or even of Handel; you are merely drifting through endless blue and purple.

Orbit's handling of Handel is probably burning Carlos up with envy. It imparts a feeling of weightlessness that is difficult to achieve under mechanical conditions, and does so with such cavalier ease that it isn't too difficult to imagine Handel standing over Orbit's shoulder, helping him with the programming.

Purists will hate "Pieces in a Modern Style," and they're well within their rights. But I'd take exception to those who would say that it misrepresents the classics. Orbit doesn't pretend to be Zubin Mehta, or present "Pieces" as anything more definitive than a career curio.

If anything, they'd be justified in slamming the dance mixes of "Adagio for Strings" -- but seeing as they're provided on a separate disc, and don't sound a damn thing like the Barber composition in any case, there's little sense in belaboring the point.

Millions of young listeners could conceivably hear Barber, Satie, Ravel and Mascagni for the first time through "Pieces." It may provide the popular thrust classical music badly needs, and will not get, from "Fantasia 2000's" brutally truncated program. True belief, it seems, never died.