Prior to “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), cinematic zombies were eerie, but mostly harmless. Generally, they did the bidding of Bela Lugosi or wandered like somnambulists through Val Lewton films. But that all changed overnight when filmmaker George A. Romero turned them into flesh-eating “ghouls” (as he called them; the word zombie is never uttered). Now, it seems, the zombie apocalypse is here to stay.
However, few films in the genre are so well executed. Romero’s lean and mean thriller has the simplest of premises and the lowest of budgets, yet good writing, editing, and direction, and a matter-of-fact tone make this one of the most convincing horror movies ever made. Especially since, as would always be the case throughout Romero’s zombie cycle (he made six “Dead” films in all), the chills are informed by real-world social and political subtexts.
“Night of the Living Dead” serves as both the last gasp of 1950s B-movie drive-in fodder and the dawn of contemporary horror. And people were indeed horrified. The film opened a month before the MPAA ratings system was implemented, and it was distributed to theaters as typical Saturday matinee fare. Critics were appalled and children were scarred for life.
We’ve become so desensitized, yet there’s a power to this film that will never die. Roy and I discuss George A. Romero’s implacable classic on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Wander glazed in the comments section. Our intestinal fortitude will be on display as human flesh is on the menu, when we livestream on Facebook (and Twitter and YouTube), this Friday evening at 7:30 EDT!
Back in the day when the big labels recorded standard repertoire and not much else, Michael Ponti was like a seismic disturbance.
Now the volcano has gone quiet. Ponti died on Monday at the age of 84.
Sure, Ponti recorded Beethoven and Scarlatti and Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. But he will always be dearest to my heart for the material he exhumed for his groundbreaking, barnstorming Romantic Piano Concerto series on Vox.
Predating by decades a similar venture on the Hyperion label, Ponti showed what he was made of, in a time before digital trickery. AND he did it all himself. (The Hyperion series draws on a bullpen of capable pianists.)
The orchestras that accompanied him could be a little rough-and-ready, but often, in its way, this just made the recordings all the more thrilling. In at least one of the concertos, Ponti, caught up in his own bravura, starts doubling the orchestra and adds a flourish or two to the coda. I still return to the series (reissued as seven double-compact discs), with my personal favorites including piano concertos by Anton Rubinstein, Josef Rheinberger, Christian Sinding, Joachim Raff, and Sergei Lyapunov. Also on Vox, Ponti broke more than a few lances for the solo piano works of Carl Tausig and Charles-Valentin Alkan.
Somehow, he was never picked up by a major label – a rare exception being a recording he made with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau of the songs of Charles Ives for Deutsche Grammophon – but he did enjoy an active career, especially in Europe. He appeared with such conductors as Sir Georg Solti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Kirill Kondrashin, and Kurt Masur, and performed in some of the world’s great concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and the Teatro Colón.
He also formed, with violinist Robert Zimansky and cellist Jan Polasek, the Ponti-Zymansky-Polasek Trio (from a marketing standpoint, perhaps not the catchiest name).
In his 60s, calamity struck, when he suffered a massive stroke. But he was able to revive his career somewhat by drawing from the vast catalogue of music composed for the left hand.
In all, he made over 80 recordings, most of them for Vox. For some reason, perhaps because he was recorded on smaller labels, often paired with minor league orchestras, he was often overlooked in surveys of important pianists. He is conspicuously absent, for instance, from New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg’s bestseller “The Great Pianists.”
Ponti was also a baseball fanatic, who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the sport. I saw a picture of him being interviewed later in life, and there are baseball books stacked all the way up the side of his couch. This obituary does a great job of a putting a human face on a super-virtuoso.
It’s a shame Hyperion Records wasn’t around in the ‘60s and ‘70s, because Ponti could eat fire with the best of them. He played with greater Romantic temperament than most of the pianists in the latter’s Romantic Piano Concerto series (again, no relation to the Vox set).
Admittedly, Ponti’s recordings weren’t always as polished as those in the top tier. I get the impression that, unlike with the majors, there was no room in the budget for retakes or first-class orchestras. These days, when even the most modest professional orchestras are crammed with hungry graduates of the world’s top conservatories, Ponti would mop the floor with much of the competition. He had talent and exuberance to burn.
Michael Ponti talks to David Dubal, now host of WWFM – The Classical Network’s “The Piano Matters”
Josef Rheinberger, Piano Concerto in A-flat major
Joachim Raff, Piano Concerto in C minor
IN CONCERT: Franz Liszt, “12 Transcendental Etudes”
If there’s a keyboard to be played in Princeton, especially if it happens to be on an organ console, then there’s a good chance Eric Plutz is in the building. Now in his 18th year as University Organist of Princeton University, Plutz has begun another very full season.
Read my profile of this remarkable musician, make plans to attend a few concerts (including those on the free “After Noon Concert Series,” at Princeton University Chapel, Thursdays at 12:30 p.m., and Princeton Pro Musica’s performance of Brahms’ “Ein Deutsches Requiem,” at Richardson Auditorium this Sunday at 4 p.m.), and, by all means, consider adding Eric’s new recording, “Vierne: The Complete Organ Symphonies,” to your collection.
The article appears in this week’s edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo, online and in area vending machines today.
It’s that time of year again. With less than two weeks until Halloween, you may be starting to experience that low-level anxiety. How exactly are you going to dress your cat?
For those in need, here are some great tips on crafting hats and hairstyles out of your little one’s own fur.
Now that you’ve got brush in hand, how about some appropriate background music? Some altruistic chap took the effort to compile all the classical music adapted for use in “The Back Cat” (1934), with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
Liszt features prominently, with an orchestration of his Piano Sonata in B minor, the orchestral version of his “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 3,” the symphonic poem “Tasso: Lament and Triumph,” and of course “Les Preludes.”
There’s more Liszt in this “faux” trailer (with Bach and Schubert and near-Tchaikovsky too):
It’s a film score magazine that’s existed in many forms over the years. It was begun basically as a pamphlet; then it was expanded into a black-and-white print magazine; then it went glossy. Finally, like everything else, it went online.
The magazine was founded by Lukas Kendall in June 1990, when he was still a student at Amherst. After he graduated, Lukas relocated to Los Angeles, and FSM really upped its game. Many of the great living film composers were friends of the magazine and granted interviews over the years, and a number of the writers, now authorities in the field, have gone on to other things.
I stumbled across this back-issue from April 1994 (the black-and-white cover days), for which I provided two CD reviews. One of them is for a release appropriate to the season, so I am sharing it here. Maybe I was a little hard on the content. For broadcast purposes, it’s given me moderate enjoyment in small doses, but on a scale of 1 to 5, I think 2 is probably about right. Maybe I’d give it a 3 now, though the running time is ridiculously short. People who were familiar with the original record were going to buy it anyway.
I know I received at least one letter from a disgruntled Hans J. Salter fan. And I mean a physical letter, since this was before everyone lived on the internet.
At a point, FSM expanded into producing its own film score CDs, 250 limited edition discs of diverse fare from the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s & ‘70s, for which I will be forever grateful. Many of these are now available only on the collector’s market at astronomical prices, but you can still pick up some of the titles for around $15-$20. Good luck getting the rest!
I hasten to point out, Film Score Monthly still exists, as a website. I haven’t really followed it for some time now, but I know “Picture Perfect” has been mentioned on its message board.
Back issues of the print incarnation of the magazine are archived online to read free of charge.
