Sealed

CD A stunningly photographed docudrama that imagines a world where man's extinction by an encroaching horde of marauding insects is all but a foregone conclusion, The Hellstrom Chronicle provided Argentine-born composer a unique musical challenge during an era when his jazz-suffused early 1970s film and TV scores (to Dirty Harry, Mannix, Mission: Impossible, etc.) were in vogue. By contrast, Schifrin relies heavily on his considerable classical training and modern instincts here, specifically a then-equally-in-vogue evocation of 20th-century classical modernism. But while polytonal music can often seem a challenging listening chore in the wrong hands, Schifrin's ever insightful mastery of color and orchestral dynamics impart its frequent use here an internal logic it so often misses. There are moments of exquisite melodic beauty and passages of raw, cacophonous terror; even a few sprightly moments of bemusing exotica, all of them conjured by Lalo Schifirn at his most inventive and unrestrained. --Jerry McCulley