Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Sherlock Holmes Movie Music on Picture Perfect

The game is afoot! This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an hour of music from movies inspired by the world’s greatest detective.

“Sherlock Holmes” (2009) features Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, in Michael Ritchie’s post-“Matrix” take on the master detective. While some of the film adaptations over the years may have glossed over the character’s physicality, Ritchie’s revisionist Holmes perhaps errs a mite too far in the other direction. Hans Zimmer wrote the music, he too going against received wisdom, and in the process coming up with one of his more interesting scores, if only for the quirky instrumentation, which includes a Hungarian cimbalom, accordion, fiddles, and a broken pub piano.

Perhaps it’s unfair to put Zimmer up against an old pro like Miklós Rózsa. Rózsa wrote the music for Billy Wilder’s melancholy portrait of the great detective, “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” (1970). Wilder requested that the composer adapt his lovely Violin Concerto for the project, a recording of which the director had listened to repeatedly during the writing of the screenplay. Rózsa and Wilder had previously collaborated on “Double Indemnity” and “The Lost Weekend.”

The Sherlock Holmes comedy, “Without a Clue” (1988), represents a missed opportunity of sorts. The hope had been for Sean Connery to play Watson opposite Michael Caine’s Holmes, a longed-for reunion between the two who had worked so well together in “The Man Who Would Be King.” In the end, it was Ben Kingsley who assumed the role.

The fun conceit that sets “Without a Clue” apart is that Holmes is the fictional creation of mastermind Watson, who in reality is the gifted crime-solver. Through necessity, Watson hires a second-rate actor to play the role of Holmes. Of course, the actor turns out to be a bumbling idiot. Henry Mancini provides the British Light Music style score, with a nod to Edmund White’s “Puffin’ Billy” (familiar stateside as the theme to “Captain Kangaroo”).

Finally, the Steven Spielberg-produced “Young Sherlock Holmes” (1985) offers a conjectural origins story, including Holmes and Watson’s first meeting as teenagers (ignoring the particulars laid out by Arthur Conan Doyle in his stories, with Watson already a war veteran who had served in Afghanistan). It’s all for fun, though it’s unfortunate the filmmakers felt the need to interject ‘80s-style special effects, rather than simply trust in the inherent magic of the subject matter. “Young Sherlock Holmes” features the first photorealistic, fully computer-generated character (a stained glass knight). Also, some Indiana Jones B-movie antics involving an Egyptian cult seem especially out of place.

Interestingly, the film’s screenwriter, Chris Columbus, went on to direct the first two Harry Potter films. By my recollection, “Young Sherlock Holmes,” with its boarding school setting, has some of that same feel.

The music, by Bruce Broughton, is certainly buoyant and beautiful, in the best John Williams tradition. Broughton scored a handful of big screen hits, notably “Silverado” and “Tombstone,” though arguably it is in the medium of television that he’s made his greatest impact. Thus far, his work has been recognized with a record 10 Grammy Awards.

It’s elementary, my dear Watson. I hope you’ll join me for “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Remember, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 29, 2023
Romeo Cascarino Rediscovered

I can’t say it’s what the composer intended, but there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Here’s the slow movement of Romeo Cascarino’s Bassoon Sonata – played on theremin and toy piano!

Cascarino, who was born on this date 101 years ago, grew up in an unforgiving neighborhood in South Philadelphia. With a name like Romeo, he had to learn how to use his fists! While navigating the School of Hard Knocks, he taught himself privately, gleaning the mechanics of music theory from books checked out of the Free Library. He was discovered by composer Paul Nordoff, who recognized his genius, and the two formed a bond that was more like a friendship than teacher-student.

While still in his teens, Cascarino was handed a letter from Aaron Copland, inviting him to Tanglewood. Romeo’s father had secretly sent the “Dean of American Composers” some of Romeo’s compositions, and Copland responded with an impressively favorable evaluation. At Tanglewood, upon further examination, Copland said he couldn’t suggest any improvements and that Romeo’s works should remain just as they were.

If you’re interested to know more, I wrote about Cascarino and Copland in further detail last year:

Later, Cascarino served as a professor of composition at Philadelphia’s Combs College of Music. The recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, he labored at his magnum opus, the opera “William Penn,” for the better part of three decades. The work received its premiere at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music in 1982 to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city. Metropolitan Opera singer bass-baritone John Cheek sang the title role.

“William Penn” is one of American opera’s best-kept secrets. I’m convinced, if only it had been completed 30 years earlier, it would now be spoken of in the same breath with Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah” and Robert Ward’s “The Crucible.”

In 2006, a number of Cascarino’s orchestral works were recorded by JoAnn Falletta for the Naxos label. These too are informed by a seductive, twilit beauty.

The Bassoon Sonata was written at the request of Cascarino’s army buddy, Sol Schoenbach, in 1942. The composer made some sketches, but completed the work only after he was discharged. Schoenbach later became principal bassoonist of the Philadelphia Orchestra and recorded the piece for Columbia Records’ “Modern American Music Series.”

This was the not only music to came out of the war. Cascarino composed his plaintive elegy, “Blades of Grass,” in 1945. The title refers to Carl Sandburg’s poem “Grass,” written in 1918, in response to the “Great War.” It seems the work was played by the U.S. Marine Band as recently as last month!

https://www.marineband.marines.mil/News/Article/3502846/playing-americas-music/

Here it is, performed by English hornist Dorothy Freeman and Philadelphia’s Orchestra 2001.

Happy birthday, Romeo Cascarino, wherever you are. Your music endures, even if we have to thank the Marines, and not the Army, for playing it!

Clockwise from left: Cascarino outside the Academy of Music, before a poster of “William Penn;” at Tanglewood with Aaron Copland (Copland standing, arms crossed, center, with Cascarino the big guy holding the cigarette on the right); and Sgt. Cascarino conducting a U.S. Army band

September 28, 2023
Vernon Duke Autumn in New York Composer

It’s autumn in New York!

Vernon Duke (né Vladimir Dukelsky) was born in what is now Belarus on this date in 1903. In Kyiv, he studied composition under Reinhold Gliere. He left the USSR in 1920, traveling to New York, where he was befriended by George Gershwin. In fact, it was Gershwin who suggested a name-change to something a bit more comprehensible to American audiences. (Gershwin himself was born Jacob Gershowitz.)

For a time, Duke ping-ponged back and forth to Europe, where he fulfilled a commission by Serge Diaghilev (for the ballet “Zephyr and Flora”). The work impressed Sergei Prokofiev, and the two became fast friends. Dukelsky’s Symphony No. 1 was given its premiere in Paris, under Serge Koussevitzky, on the same program as excerpts from Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Angel.”

Around the same time, Duke began contributing material to musical comedies in London. This laid the groundwork for a return to New York in 1929. There, he continued to composed “serious” works, while insinuating himself into the Broadway scene. A number of his songs – “April in Paris,” “Autumn in New York,” “Taking a Chance on Love,” “I Can’t Get Started” – have since become standards.

When Gershwin died in 1937, Duke stepped in to complete his unfinished score for “The Goldwyn Follies,” for which he contributed a couple of ballets (choreographed by George Balanchine) and the song, “Spring Again.” His greatest success came in 1940, with the Broadway show, “Cabin in the Sky.”

Here’s a rare concert broadcast of his Symphony No. 3:

A number of his concert works have been recorded in recent years, including this Piano Concerto for Arthur Rubinstein:

His Cello Concerto, performed by Samuel Magill, then of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra:

“Autumn in New York”

“Brooklyn Barcarolle”

PHOTO: Duke (right) with Ira Gershwin

September 27, 2023
David McCallum From Music Prodigy To UNCLE Star

David McCallum is probably best known for playing Ilya Kuryakin in the hit series “The Man from UNCLE,” which aired on NBC from 1964 to 1968, and associated movies (with added sex and violence). But for a time, it seemed as if he was on track to follow in his parents’ footsteps to become a career musician.

His mother, Dorothy Dorman, was a cellist. His father, David McCallum Sr., was concertmaster of the London Philharmonic and later the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, both at the invitation of Sir Thomas Beecham. Once, when on tour in the U.S., Beecham fell ill, and it fell to the senior McCallum to conduct the orchestra – which he did, to positive reviews.

He also played for the Beatles and was Mantovani’s leader for 10 years. As “The Man from UNCLE” took off, Mantovani quipped, “We can afford the father, but not the son.”

Needless to say, the younger McCallum grew up in a supportive household that nurtured his interest in music. He himself trained on the violin and cello, although oboe was to become his focus. In 1951, he became assistant stage manager of the Glyndebourne Opera Company. However, by then, the acting bug had bitten.

He did record several albums, on which he conducted, and for which he composed and arranged, though many of the tracks were covers of popular hits of the day. Only a classically-trained musician would think to add parts for oboe, cor anglais, and strings to guitar and drums.

McCallum played a variety of instruments onscreen in “The Man from UNCLE.” He also appeared in a memorable “The Outer Limits” episode, “The Sixth Finger,” in which he sprouts an extra digit on either hand and plays Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier” (although it’s Glenn Gould on the soundtrack).

He confessed that music never grabbed him quite the way that acting did. But the desire to express himself in music never left. McCallum died yesterday at the age of 90.

“The Edge” by David McCallum

From “The Sixth Finger”

Playing guitar and singing with Nancy Sinatra on “The Man from UNCLE”

Clockwise from left: on guitar; on oboe at age 12; on double-bass on “The Man from UNCLE;” and playing Bach on “The Outer Limits”

September 26, 2023
George Gershwin American Original

He began his career as a song plugger on New York’s Tin Pan Alley. He was “discovered” by Al Jolson, who gave him his biggest hit. He composed a string of successful stage musicals with lyrics by his brother, Ira.

Though he had classical training, he was turned away by both Nadia Boulanger and Maurice Ravel, on the grounds that they didn’t want to spoil his natural voice. He played tennis with Arnold Schoenberg, who also refused him lessons. He kept an autographed photo of Alban Berg in his apartment, next to one of Jack Dempsey.

His musical, “Of Thee I Sing,” was the first to win a Pulitzer Prize. His opera, “Porgy and Bess,” was a failure at its premiere. His songs graced elegant screen comedies of the 1930s. In the concert hall, he was America’s most authentic voice.

George Gershwin died of a brain tumor in 1937, at the age of 38. Reportedly, his last words were “Fred Astaire.”

All just the tip of the ice afloat in bathtub gin for this multifaceted American original. Happy 125, George!

Gershwin documentary that aired on the History Channel and was distributed by A&E – back when A&E was still A&E!

Clockwise from left: George himself; at the keyboard with Fred Astaire and Ira; painting a portrait of Arnold Schoenberg

September 26, 2023

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