Friday the 13th! Beware of ladders, broken mirrors, and… black cats?
Unluckily, metaphorical big cats is the focus this week on “Picture Perfect.”
Simone Simon’s barely repressed desires are made manifest in Val Lewton’s “Cat People” (1942). Lewton was a master of suggestion, with a majority of the horrors in his films imagined, rather than seen. Part of the approach was practical, the result of shoestring budgets imposed by RKO. Whatever the case, the insinuating weirdness undeniably produced psychological chills. In fact, it was only as a concession to the studio that a literal big cat was included at all. The music was by RKO workhorse Roy Webb.
Sean Connery plays a Berber chieftain who faces off against Teddy Roosevelt in “The Wind and the Lion” (1975). In a letter to Roosevelt (played in the film by Brian Keith), Connery’s character writes, “I, like the lion, must stay in my place, while you, like the wind, will never know yours.” Jerry Goldsmith provided one of his best scores for the Moroccan adventure. In fact, he was fairly confident he finally had a lock on the Oscar. He experienced a harsh reality check when he went to see “Jaws.” (Goldsmith would win his only Academy Award the following year for his music to “The Omen.”)
Luchino Visconti’s epic telling of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s “The Leopard” (1963) is a melancholy exploration of the fading Sicilian aristocracy. A bewhiskered Burt Lancaster plays Prince Fabrizio, who feels himself slipping into obsolescence. Nino Rota gives the film a full-blooded, operatic soundtrack, full of lyricism and pathos.
Finally, Lyn Murray provides the breezy accompaniment for Alfred Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief” (1955), with Cary Grant a reformed burglar, known as The Cat, who attempts to clear himself of some “copycat” crimes while romancing Grace Kelly on the French Riviera.
We throw salt over our left shoulder and caution to the winds, with an hour of music for metaphorical big cats – any excuse to ignore Valentine’s Day and get “The Wind and the Lion” and “The Leopard” on the same program – on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu
Category: Daily Dispatch
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Metaphorical Big Cats on “Picture Perfect”
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Lincoln Portrait
Intelligent. Wise. Principled. Empathetic. Compassionate. Honest. Fair. Just. Kind. Courteous. Magnanimous. Visionary. Humble. Articulate. Witty. Corrigible. Hard-working. Courageous. Gracious. Resilient.
Aware of his shortcomings. Strove to improve himself. Assembled “team of rivals” to unify and learn from those with differing viewpoints. Understood leadership and sacrifice. Risked everything to preserve the Union.
16th president of the United States.
Abraham Lincoln was born on this date in 1809. They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to.“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
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James Earl Jones in Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmfaH5kJv3U
Roy Harris (born on this date in 1898), Symphony No. 6 “Gettysburg”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJig7H0NJd8&t
Paul Turok, “Variations on an American Song: Aspects of Lincoln and Liberty” – conducted by Leonard Slatkin, newly-designated music director of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoD2TDrZ4Jg -
Farewell to Helmuth Rilling
The German choral director Helmuth Rilling has died. Rilling is probably best-known for his advocacy of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. In a career that spanned some 70 years, he established the Gächinger Kantorei, the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, and other Bach academies around the world.
He was the first person to prepare and record on modern instruments Bach’s complete choral works. His impressive roster of vocal soloists includes Arlene Auger, Juliane Banse, Matthias Goerne, Anne Sofie von Otter, Christophe Prégardien, Thomas Quasthoff, and Christine Schäfer. The instrumental soloists include Robert Levin, Trevor Pinnock, and Dmitry Sitkovetsky, among many others. The achievement, completed in the year 2000, encompasses over 1,000 pieces of music, documented on 170 compact discs.
In 1970, Rilling cofounded the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene, presented in conjunction with the University of Oregon (home of KWAX). Rilling served as artistic director there until 2013.
His recordings, many of them issued on the Hänssler Classic label, range far beyond Bach and his contemporaries. I’ve got a few of them in my collection, including his recording of Liszt’s oratorio “Christus” (among three of the work that I own).
His recording of Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Credo,” commissioned and performed by the Oregon Bach Festival, won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.
Rilling died yesterday at the age of 92.R.I.P.
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Bach, Mass in B minorhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gw318qPDhk
Premiere of Penderecki’s “Credo,” live from Eugene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWOzt7zMDCo -
Farewell to Tamás Vásáry
When the Hungarian pianist Tamás Vásáry died last week, I had too many other obligations to honor him properly.
Vásáry was a child prodigy who entered the Debrecen Conservatory at the age of 6. At 10, he became a student of Ernő Dohnányi. He was personally supervised by Zoltán Kodály at the Franz Liszt Academy. He graduated in 1953. In 1956, the year of the Hungarian Uprising, Vásáry fled to Switzerland. Later, he made his home in London.
In the U.K., he diversified. With Iván Fischer, he shared the title of joint principal conductor of the Northern Sinfonia from 1972 to 1982. He was principal conductor of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta from 1989 to 1997. Beginning in 1993, he also served as principal conductor of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
As a pianist, he toured widely. His international fame was bolstered by a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon.
I remember in the 1970s and ’80s, Vásáry’s early recordings were already being reissued at budget price, making them very affordable. It was the heyday of soft-focus, Elvira Madigan-type cover art. His performances were further disseminated on grab-and-go cassettes.
Chopin and Liszt were always central to his repertoire.
Performing Debussy, Chopin, and Liszt on the French television series “Les grands interprètes”
At the age of 80, playing the last movement of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3
An interview from 2021
https://press.agency/our-existence-in-this-world-is-only-a-small-part-of-our-lives/
Vásáry died on February 5 at the age of 93. R.I.P. -
Jerry Goldsmith: Alchemist Extraordinaire
He was a smith who forged gold from the basest of materials – film music’s alchemist extraordinaire. Once John Williams kickstarted his blockbuster hog, Jerry Goldsmith may have been destined for the side car, but he possessed a refined genius all his own.
Goldsmith was a consummate professional with a rare talent for speed. When Randy Newman was dropped from “Air Force One,” it was Goldsmith who stepped up, writing and recording the music in less than two weeks. He wrote the replacement score for “Chinatown” in ten days.
Unfortunately, not all the films were “Chinatown.” For every “Planet of the Apes,” “Patton,” and “Papillon,” there was “The Mummy” (with Brendan Fraser), “The Haunting” (remake), and “Looney Tunes: Back in Action.”
Williams got “Superman.” Goldsmith got “Supergirl.” Williams got “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Goldsmith got “King Solomon’s Mines” (with Richard Chamberlain). Williams got “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.” Goldsmith got “Baby: The Secret of the Lost Legend.”
But even when the movies were terrible, Goldsmith’s music served as a consolation prize. And nothing can take away the classics. He was one of the last of the greats, and he lived through a great era, so we certainly have enough to cherish. He just had the bad fortune to have had more stamina than the movies themselves, which got weaker and weaker and weaker.
The composer himself expressed frustration at his music being drowned out by ever more-elaborate sound effects, which is why his scores tended to become more streamlined – and less memorable – in the ‘90s. He would have lost his mind in these days of laptop editing, when movies can be trimmed and shuffled within an inch of their lives, virtually right up until the day of distribution.
For television, he wrote music for “Dr. Kildare,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Gunsmoke,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Waltons,” “Room 222,” and “Barnaby Jones.” He was the recipient of five Emmy Awards.
Incredibly, despite EIGHTEEN nominations, he was honored with but a single Oscar, for his influential score to “The Omen” (1976). Goldsmith died in 2004, at the age of 75. If he were to come back today, he would mop the joint with all the Hans Zimmers of this world.
Happy birthday, Jerry Goldsmith. I sure does miss you.
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The Man from U.N.C.L.E.:The Blue Max
Planet of the Apes:
Patton:
Chinatown:
The Wind and the Lion:
The Omen:
The Great Train Robbery
Star Trek: The Motion Picture:
Goldsmith discusses film music, circa 1986
Documentary from 1993
Introducing and conducting his music with the National Philharmonic in 1989
Introducing and conducting his music, and others’, with the BBC Concert Orchestra in 1994
Part 1
Part 2
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