Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

David Raksin Laura’s Composer Remembered

There are a number of interesting birthday anniversaries today, including those of Jean-Baptiste Lully, William Schuman and Louis Armstrong (who believed he was born on July 4).

However, I’m going to focus on David Raksin, the Philadelphia-born film composer, who attained immortality with his music for “Laura” (1944), which, with the addition of lyrics by Johnny Mercer, went on to become a popular standard. In fact, it’s said that in Raksin’s lifetime “Laura” was recorded more than any other song, save Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust.”

Raksin worked on over 100 films and 300 television shows. One of the earliest was Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” (1936). While Chaplin was an amateur violinist who “composed” all of his own scores, it was people like Raksin who really did the heavy lifting, filling out the harmony and the orchestration and so forth. Their work together led to some friction, with the demanding Chaplin firing Raksin at least once, but the two wound up fast friends, full of mutual respect.

Despite decades of fine work, Raksin never attained the status of composers like Max Steiner or Erich Wolfgang Korngold. However, film historians and classic movie fans owe Raksin much, since he lived long enough (he was 92 when he died in 2004) and possessed a sharp enough memory that he was able to recount many, many interesting anecdotes about colleagues who had since passed on into legend.

Some thumbnails are posted on the website of the American Composers Orchestra, so that it’s possible to enjoy a few of Raksin’s recollections of Steiner, Korngold, Bernard Herrmann and the rest. You can find them by clicking here:

http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_intro.htm

Happy birthday, David Raksin!

Raksin conducts “Laura”:

August 4, 2015
Australian Music & Indigenous Instruments

G’day, mate!

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” the focus is on Australian music that incorporates authentic instruments of the indigenous peoples.

It’s possible that no composer has embraced the didgeridoo to quite the extent of Peter Sculthorpe, who lived from 1929 to 2104. Sculthorpe, in his maturity Australia’s most prominent composer, was occupied with environmental concerns, such as preservation of wildlands and climate change, and possessed an overt sympathy with aboriginal culture.

He composed 18 string quartets. Four of them have a part for didgeridoo. His String Quartet No. 12, completed in 1994, is inspired by Ubirr, a large rocky outcrop in Kakadu National Park in northern Australia, which houses some of the best and most varied aboriginal rock paintings in the country.

John Antill’s ballet, “Corroboree,” from 1944, was one of the first attempts to incorporate authentic aboriginal elements into modern classical music. Corroboree is the anglicized word for an aboriginal ceremony involving singing and dancing, in order to communicate “dreaming stories” about journeys and actions of ancestral beings which will continue to have consequences in the future.

Antill attended one of these sacred ceremonies in Botany Bay in 1913, the same year as the debut of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” Antill later denied any previous knowledge of Stravinsky’s ballet, even at the point he came to write the work 30 years later.

In addition to the use of the didgeridoo, the orchestration also includes a part for bullroarer, a kind of blade on a long cord that when swung in a large circle makes a roaring vibrato sound.

“Corroboree” received its first complete recording on the Naxos label in 2008. That’s the version we’ll hear, though in terms of unbridled primitivism, it’s difficult to match the suite, as recorded by Sir Eugene Goossens and the London Symphony Orchestra, back in 1958. If you like what you hear, definitely seek that one out.

I hope you’ll join me for this musical walkabout through the Australian outback. “Didya Hear the One About the Didgeridoo?” Tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

To get you in the mood, here’s ten hours of didgeridoo music:

And a demonstration of the bullroarer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ODGE2f7gLQ

August 2, 2015
“The Golden Apple” Complete Recording Review

Virtually just in time for Jerome Moross’ 102nd birthday anniversary (which is today), I received a new, 2-CD set – the first complete recording – of the composer’s ebullient Broadway show, “The Golden Apple.”

Moross, of course, wrote one of the great, big screen western scores, that for “The Big Country” (1958). Prior to that, he was a protégé of Aaron Copland and a friend of Bernard Herrmann (with whom he used to sneak into rehearsals of the New York Philharmonic.)

“The Golden Apple” (1954) is a witty mash-up of Americana and Greek mythology, the scenario loosely based on elements from Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” The marriage of libretto and music nimbly expands the boundaries of popular entertainment, prefiguring by several decades through-composed musical theater hits like “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Les Miserables.”

The music is quintessential Moross. There is a touch of “The Big Country” in just about everything he wrote, and if you are a fan of that score, you will likely find much to enjoy in “The Golden Apple.” The composer stitches together an infectious crazy quilt of ballads, cakewalks, marches and music hall-type numbers. Philadelphia-born Hershy Kay expertly assists with the lush orchestrations.

While it was met with critical acclaim at the time of its opening, the musical failed to find the audience it deserved. Instead, crowds flocked to “The Pajama Game.” Despite the show’s unjust neglect, one of the numbers in particular quickly became a popular standard, the bluesy ballad “Lazy Afternoon” – though others, like “It’s the Going Home Together” and “Windflowers,” are equally deserving.

The new recording, from PS Classics, is taken from a 2014 production mounted by Lyric Stage of Irving, TX, featuring a 38-piece orchestra and a 43-member cast. The texts are well-enunciated by the singers – essential for comprehension of the plot, certainly, but also a joy in itself for the wit of John Latouche’s lyrics, which tickle both the funny bone and the brain – and the recorded balance of voice and music is well-judged. Even so, the booklet contains a luxury so often sadly missing in these days of no-frills packaging: a full libretto.

A superb recording featuring the original cast was issued in 1954, but only a fraction of the show’s numbers were represented, and many of those in truncated form. Also, the sound on compact disc reissue is beginning to show its age, tinny and a tad harsh.

At last “The Golden Apple” can be heard and enjoyed as it was originally intended, with almost 90 minutes of previously unrecorded material. The release is very reasonably priced, essentially two discs for the price of one. There are periodic outbursts of applause revealing the recording’s live origins. However, these are few and largely unobtrusive. If you are a fan of Moross’ music and can tolerate musical theater, I encourage you to give it a shot.

You can find a few sound clips here:

http://www.psclassics.com/cd_goldenapple.html

“Lazy Afternoon,” sung by Kaye Ballard from the 1954 original cast recording:

August 1, 2015
Lost Worlds Movie Music Adventures

This week on “Picture Perfect,” I invite you to get lost. It’s all music from movies about lost worlds and forgotten civilizations.

While the concept of the “Lost World” dates at least as far back as Plato’s Atlantis, it wasn’t until the Victorian Era that the idea really blossomed in the public consciousness. At the time, of course, lost civilizations were genuinely being discovered – which might help explain, in part, the incredible of success of “King Solomon’s Mines.” The author, H. Rider Haggard, wrote the book on a bet that he could churn out an adventure story half as good as Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” which had been published two years earlier.

“King Solomon’s Mines” became the literary sensation of 1885. Its protagonist, Allen Quatermain, is a direct ancestor of Indiana Jones. The book inspired reams of sequels and at least five film adaptations.

The two best known starred Stewart Granger, in 1950, and Paul Robeson, in 1937. Robeson, who played Umbopa, a king in disguise, received top billing. The score was by Mischa Spoliansky.

Haggard achieved another “Lost World” hit with “She,” first issued in book form in 1887 – another adventure about Europeans in Africa, who meet a seemingly immortal white queen known as the all-powerful “She,” or “She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.”

“She” has been adapted to film six times. The 1965 version starred Ursula Andress, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The music was by Hammer Studios house composer, James Bernard. It’s nice to hear Bernard, who mostly wrote horror scores for the likes of Dracula and Frankenstein, provide something a little more nuanced for a change.

Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King,” published in 1888, was clearly influenced by the writings of Haggard. In this case, two British adventurers in India strike out for a remote corner of Afghanistan to set themselves up as kings. The story was made into one of the great adventure films of the 1970s, directed by John Huston, and starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. That Christopher Plummer appears as Kipling himself is only icing on the cake. Maurice Jarre wrote the rousing score.

Finally, James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon,” published in 1933, imagines Shangri-La, a Utopian society nestled in a sheltered valley somewhere in the mountains of Tibet. A British diplomat is one of a handful of passengers who survives a plane crash to be taken into the lamasery.

“Lost Horizon” was made into a film twice. The less said about the 1973 version, a musical with songs by Burt Bacharach, the better. Frank Capra directed the classic 1937 version, which starred Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, and outstanding character actors of the day, people like Edward Everett Horton, Thomas Mitchell, Sam Jaffe and H.B. Warner.

The score, Dimitri Tiomkin’s first major contribution, was also one of his most ambitious. Seldom was it so obvious that he had studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Alexander Glazunov.

I hope you’ll lose yourself in music for lost civilizations this week, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening at 6, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Connery (right) with the man who would be Caine

July 30, 2015
Sigmund Romberg’s Birthday & Dream Casting

Sigmund Romberg was born on this date in 1887. Romberg, of course, was the super-successful composer of musicals and operettas like “The Student Prince,” “Desert Song” and “New Moon.”

His life was made into a film, “Deep in My Heart,” in 1954. If you were to make a film about Sigmund Romberg, who would you cast in the title role? Why, José Ferrer, of course! This would be after Ferrer’s Academy Award-winning turn as Cyrano de Bergerac, by the way.

Here’s a radio broadcast promoting the film, featuring much of the cast, including Helen Traubel, Rosemary Clooney, Jane Powell, Vic Damone, Gene and Fred Kelly, Ann Miller, Tony Martin, and Howard Keel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyoG8x_x1BU

PHOTO: José Ferrer, skating on Oscar gold

July 29, 2015

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