Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Napoleonic Wars: Classic Movie Scores

There is a bon mot you may have heard to the effect that England and America are two countries divided by a common language. The observation is sharp and spot-on, so naturally it has been attributed to two of the greatest wits of their day, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Yet these attributions are without verifiable foundation. (The closest Wilde ever came in print: “We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, the language.”)

Similarly, we all know what is meant by “Napoleon complex.” But did you know there is every possibility that Napoleon was not short? Like the commonality of language that divides the English and the Americans (and I know that Shaw and Wilde were Irish), it turns out that there may be some confusion over Napoleon’s actual height on account of two different systems of measurement that happened to use the same terms.

Be that as it may, this week on “Picture Perfect,” with Bastille Day (July 14) right around the corner, we’ll surge to power on the allegedly diminutive shoulders of Napoleon Bonaparte. The focus will be on the Napoleonic Wars – which is to say, movies set, at least in part, between about 1803 and 1815.

There is a lot of unlikely casting in these films. The first English language adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (1956) stars Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Mel Ferrer, with Herbert Lom as Napoleon. Lom is fine; but Henry Fonda? At least the music is by Nino Rota.

Stanley Kramer’s “The Pride and the Passion” (1957) is loosely based on the novel “The Gun,” by C.S. Forester. Forester is best known for the nautical adventures of Horatio Hornblower – also set during the Napoleonic Wars.

The film depicts the story of a British officer (Cary Grant) who is ordered to retrieve a large cannon from Spain. But before he can do so, he must lend assistance to the leader of the Spanish guerillas (Frank Sinatra!) in the transport of the weapon across 600 miles of treacherous ground to reclaim the city of Avila from the French. Further complications arise from their respective feelings for Sinatra’s mistress (Sophia Loren).

The score is by Trenton-born George Antheil, self-proclaimed “Bad Boy of Music.” Antheil achieved lasting notoriety as the composer of the raucous “Ballet Mécanique” in the 1920s. He would later embrace a more conservative language for his symphonies and for his music for the movies. Antheil composed over 30 film scores. “The Pride and the Passion” would be his last.

Ridley Scott’s first feature, “The Duellists” (1977), is based on a story by Joseph Conrad. It relates the tale of an obsessive duellist (Harvey Keitel), who takes it as a personal affront when he is arrested by a fellow hussar (Keith Carradine) for crossing swords with the mayor’s nephew, whom he has fatally wounded. This sets the two men in a kind of combative pas de deux, a series of duels that spans the entire Napoleonic era. The sheer beauty of the film is matched by Howard Blake’s haunting score.

Abel Gance’s “Napoleon” (1927) is widely regarded as one of the towering achievements in all of cinema. I’ve had the good fortune to see it on the big screen twice. However, it was with a new score by Carmine Coppola, the father of Francis Ford Coppola, who financed the film’s revival. The original score was by Arthur Honegger. Honegger was the famed French composer (of Swiss birth), who was one of the members of Les Six, a lose collective of artists that also included Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud.

Gance’s epic was gargantuan at the time I saw it, in the 1980s – about four hours long. The most recent restoration, previewed at the Cannes Film Festival in May, brings the running time to 7 hours. That’s still down from a 9 ½ hour version shown in 1927!

The epic is crowned by a grandiose triptych, for which the screen widens to accommodate the simultaneous projection of three reels – an extraordinary innovation for its time. “Napoleon” is full of such touches. Apparently, there had even been a sequence shot in 3-D, which was left on the cutting room floor. If you’re at all interested in the squandered potential of cinema, this is a film which must be seen in the theater.

I hope you’ll join me for music from big movies set during the Napoleonic Wars. It will be a satisfying show by any measure, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Frank Strobel conducted an orchestra of 250 musicians in the premiere of the most recent restoration of Gance’s “Napoleon” on July 4 & 5.

250-Piece Orchestra Accompanies ‘Napoleon by Abel Gance’ At Two-Day Restoration Premiere

PHOTO: A brooding Harvey Keitel in the extraordinarily beautiful “The Duellists”

July 12, 2024
KWAX Classical Radio Home of Picture Perfect Sweetness and Light

I receive a shout-out in this write-up about KWAX from 2013 (at the link). I hasten to emphasize, the article is 11 years old! Still, the station is much the same, even if some of the shows on its roster have changed. It’s rare that classical music hosts are allowed to choose their own music. All the more reason to cherish the station.

https://northwestreverb.blogspot.com/2013/05/terry-ross-on-kwax-classical-radio.html

This week’s “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord” are ready to go. I’m in the process of recording my Saturday morning show, “Sweetness and Light,” right now. It’s a celebration of Bastille Day, so yes, lots of French music to come (and some Franz Liszt). The current air times for all three shows are posted below.

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

July 11, 2024
Rushing or Dragging Understanding Toddler Paces

Is she rushing, or is she dragging?

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1091748881880300

July 11, 2024
Remembering the BBC’s “My Music”

Scrolling through the musical birthdays today, I notice the name of Ian Wallace. Does anyone else remember “My Music?”

“My Music” was a ridiculously entertaining BBC game show, I suppose (what else to call it?) that pit two teams of two panelists each against one another for a half-hour of musical trivia, song, and droll digression. I don’t think anyone ever really cared who won, least of all the contestants, who returned week after week anyway.

Ian Wallace (1919-2009), a bass-baritone, broadcaster, and entertainer, appeared regularly, alongside comedy writers Denis Norden (1922-2018) and Frank Muir (1920-1998). At the point I was listening they were usually joined by broadcaster and music critic John Amis (1922-2013). Other contestants over the years included singers David Franklin and Owen Brannigan. The show was hosted for its entire run by Steve Race (1921-2009). Wallace and Race appeared in all 502 episodes. Race, also a pianist, accompanied each of the contestants in zany novelty songs and music hall numbers. The non-singers had no voices at all, but that only lent to the fun.

Even though the show ran from 1967 to 1993 (with rebroadcasts continuing until 2011), the production always had something of an early ‘70s vibe, kind of like if Dick Cavett had hosted a revival of “Name That Tune” produced by Chuck Barris. There was also a TV show that ran from 1977 to 1983. Even without seeing these guys, I just knew they were wearing very wide lapels.

I listened to it for years on our radio station, which carried it from the BBC World Service, by way of the WFMT Fine Arts Network, when it aired on Saturday evenings. At the start, I would listen for the pure enjoyment of it – I always admire the breadth and width of experience of seasoned music-lovers, and these guys had clearly been around and seen and heard it all – whether it be classical, jazz, popular, or music hall.

Week after week, I’d listen and try to play along, and every once in a while I’d know an answer, but any one of these guys could have mopped the floor with me. Little did I realize I was like one of those bumbling apprentices in a kung fu movie, subject to repeated failure and humiliation, only to realize at the climactic showdown that, through observation and the wise tutelage of a sly master, I had inadvertently been attaining mastery myself! Seemingly all at once, the day came when I could actually answer most of the questions. Then, of course, the distributors finally pulled the plug.

Of course, no matter how much of the trivia I knew, there is no way I would ever acquire the same kind of experience these gentlemen did, all of them having lived through the Great Depression and World War II. All of them had seen and heard so much. And, of course, they were all outstanding raconteurs.

I confess I’m just using Wallace’s birthday as an excuse to write about this, as earlier this summer I came across some television broadcasts of the program on YouTube, and I’d been biding my time to post about it.

I admit that not every 30 year-old would find “My Music” entertaining, but I was always a little unusual. This would have been the era during which I had to rise at 3 or 4:00 in order to turn on the transmitter before my morning air shifts. If I heard the start of “Distant Mirror” at 10 p.m., I knew I was up too late! Since I always lived in student-heavy neighborhoods and apartment buildings, parties would often rage well into the night. I had very little sleep on weekends for 19 years. Perhaps this aged me sufficiently so that I was on the same wavelength as “My Music!”

I do miss these guys. Accumulated knowledge like theirs, much of it time-specific, is irreplaceable. As each generation passes, we lose so much. And their like will not come again.

“My Music” television broadcast – with smaller lapels and less garish colors than I would have ever imagined!

PHOTO (left to right): Ian Wallace, Denis Norden, Frank Muir, and John Amis; at the piano, Steve Race

July 10, 2024
Leonard Pennario Piano Bridge Master

He liked his keys and he liked his cards. One hundred years ago today, pianist and bridge master Leonard Pennario was born in Buffalo, New York.

Pennario gave his first public performance in a department store there at the age of 7. After his father’s shoe business collapsed during the Great Depression, he and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was 10. Los Angeles was to remain his base of operations for the rest of his career, until his retirement in 2005.

Pennario was a born musician with an outstanding memory. At the age of 12, he was recommended by Sir Eugene Goossens to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as a substitute for an ailing pianist. Asked if he knew Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Pennario said yes, when in fact he had never even heard it. He was able to learn the piece in six days, without missing any school. His debut was a triumph and the beginning of an extraordinary career.

He rose to prominence without ever attending a music college or entering a piano competition. He did, however, take lessons from Isabelle Vengerova, whose other students included Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Gary Graffman, and Abbey Simon. He also studied composition with Ernst Toch at the University of Southern California.

He served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, and made his debut with the New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodzinski, in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, while still in uniform, in 1943.

Temperamentally, he was the polar opposite of Glenn Gould, who, early on, abandoned public concertizing, in favor of the hermetic environment of the recording studio, or even Vladimir Horowitz who suffered harrowing bouts of stage fright. Pennario adored performing before an audience, and his magnetism and self-confidence were evident to those who were lucky enough to have heard him live. His was an unshakeable technique, characterized by clarity, speed, and accuracy, combined with a sense of spontaneity and soulfulness.

His recordings of Gershwin and Rachmaninoff have seldom, if ever, been out of the catalogue. His “Rhapsody in Blue” was one of the most popular of all classical LPs, and he was the first pianist after the composer to record all the Rachmaninoff concertos. In 1959, he was declared the best-selling American pianist. He was also the first to record the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. In all, he made over 60 records.

Pennario’s association with Hollywood unsettled some musical elitists, especially when he recorded an album like “Concertos Under the Stars,” featuring Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto,” among other potboilers, or when he adapted his own “Midnight on the Cliffs” for the Doris Day film “Julie.” He dated Elizabeth Taylor and palled around with Judy Garland. He was an early champion of the concert music of Academy Award-winning film composer Miklós Rózsa. In the meantime, he was also recording piano trios with Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.

In addition to being an exceptional pianist, he was an accomplished card player. He discovered bridge in 1965, formed a celebrity quartet with Don Adams (of “Get Smart”), band leader Les Brown, and Joan Benny (Jack Benny’s daughter), and under the tutelage of his friend, columnist Alfred Sheinwold, attained an enviable level of expertise. In fact, he became a Life Master in tournament bridge, and earned a listing in the Official Encyclopedia of Bridge.

Apparently, Sheinwold shared Pennario’s passion for music. During their get-togethers the pianist would sometimes accompany him in lieder of Schubert and Brahms. Said Pennario, “He had a fine tenor voice… I would accompany him and he in turn would partner me in tournaments. Each of us felt he had the better deal!”

In the late 1990s, the onset of Parkinson’s Disease forced Pennario into retirement. Bridge became the solace of his old age. He died in La Jolla, California, on June 28, 2008, at the age of 83.

Fondly remembering Leonard Pennario on the 100th anniversary of his birth!

“Rhapsody in Blue”

With Fiedler and the Boston Pops: Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” César Franck’s “Symphonic Variations,” and Henry Charles Litolff’s Scherzo from the Concerto Symphonique No. 4

Live performance of Miklós Rózsa’s Piano Concerto, with post-performance interview

Trios with Heifetz and Piatigorsky

“Midnight on the Cliffs”

On Kraft Music Hall with Nelson Eddy in 1947

July 9, 2024

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