This week on “Picture Perfect,” a show built around movies with women’s names for titles permits us to travel across a broad of array of genres – contemporary drama, Regency Era comedy of manners, 1940s film noir, and 16th century costume picture.
In “Rachel, Rachel” (1968), Joanne Woodward plays a repressed, small-town schoolteacher, who learns to take control of her own life. The film marked the directorial debut of Woodward’s husband, Paul Newman. “Rachel, Rachel” was nominated for four Academy Awards, including those for Best Actress and Best Picture. Newman picked up a Golden Globe and a New York Critics Circle Award for his direction. The lovely Americana score is by Jerome Moross.
In “Emma” (1996), adapted from novel of Jane Austen, Gwyneth Paltrow plays a high spirited-though-somewhat-clueless matchmaker, who fails to recognize her own feelings or those of the men around her. Among the supporting cast are Alan Cumming, Toni Collette, Ewan McGregor, and Jeremy Northam. Screenwriter and director Douglas McGrath fell in love with the book while an undergraduate at Princeton University. Rachel Portman wrote the Academy Award-winning score.
Not surprisingly, the Otto Preminger film noir “Laura” (1944) also sports quite the cast, including Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Judith Anderson, and Vincent Price. The equally impressive theme, heard in multiple permutations throughout the film, was written by Philadelphia-born composer David Raksin. Outfitted with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, it went on to become the second most-recorded song during the composer’s lifetime, behind only Hoagie Carmichael’s “Stardust.”
Finally, “Diane” (1956) takes us back to 16th century France, with a plot concerning Diane de Poitiers, played by Lana Turner, a member of the court of Francis I, who becomes the mistress of the king’s son, Henri d’Orléans, a very young Roger Moore. Their illicit love unfolds against the backdrop of Medici intrigue and lust for power. Miklós Rózsa, M-G-M’s go-to-composer for historical spectacles, wrote the music.
I hope you’ll join me for “What’s in a Name?,” 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 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
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PHOTO: Dana Andrews likes his women stiff, like his bourbon
Category: Daily Dispatch
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Seymour: An Epilogue
Between the obligation to promote my radio shows every Friday and Saturday, then last week falling ill as I teetered into the weekend, I just couldn’t pull it together to acknowledge the passing of Seymour Bernstein.
Born and raised in Newark, NJ (and no relation to Leonard), Bernstein basically taught piano for 80+ years, from the time his own teacher, Clara Husserl, herself a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky – who studied with Carl Czerny, who studied with Beethoven – delegated the supervision of some of her more gifted, younger pupils to him when he was only 15.
Bernstein also studied with Alexander Brailowsky, Clifford Curzon, and Jan Gorbaty, legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, and master of all trades George Enescu. That is quite the gallery of mentors!
Bernstein was the soloist in the world premiere of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1969. Even at the height of his career as a performer, he taught, conducting master classes in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
He abandoned the concert stage at the age of 50, opting instead for the quieter satisfactions of teaching and composing. He intimated to no one that his final concert, in 1977, would be his swan song.
His Achilles’ heel was debilitating stage fright. It drove him to early retirement, and later in life, when he was persuaded to go before the cameras for a documentary about him, he blacked out.
He long maintained a private studio in New York City, where he continued to teach practically to the time of his death. His books include “With Your Own Two Hands: Self-Discovery Through Music,” “20 Lessons in Keyboard Choreography,” “Monsters and Angels: Surviving a Career in Music,” and “Chopin: Interpreting His Notational Symbols.”
Warm and funny, dry, opinionated, and always full of insight, Bernstein was a larger-than-life character whose philosophy of musicmaking was always rooted in the heart. He could lull you with that grandfatherly exterior, but watch out! He was as sharp as C-sharp major.
In 2015, that documentary was released. “Seymour: An Introduction” was directed by Princeton’s Ethan Hawke – and if you’re a J.D. Salinger fan, you’ll doubly appreciate the title. The film has a 100-percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. You can watch the trailer here.
A Bernstein interview at the age of 90 on “Living the Classical Life”
There are also hours of fascinating videos on the YouTube channel “tonebase PIANO.” In this one, Bernstein dismantles Glenn Gould’s Mozart.
Bernstein plays Brahms
At 19, playing Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz No. 1”
Bernstein died on April 30. At the time of his death, he was 99 years old.
R.I.P. -
Frankly Surprised: An Actual, Straight-Down-the-Middle Composer Wins the Pulitzer
Gabriela Lena Frank is the recipient of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Music. The prize was announced yesterday, but certain slow-to-react social media outlets are still catching up with the news.
Frank was recognized for “Picaflor: A Future Myth.” The work is tied to the composer’s personal experiences with the California wildfires and her knowledge Andean legend.
The composition was introduced in Marian Anderson Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts on March 13, 2025, by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. It was a co-commission of the orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, and Bravo! Vail Music Center.
Cast in “ten powerful movements,” as characterized by the Pulitzer committee, “Picaflor” follows an original program, inspired by Andean-Peruvian mythology transplanted to a futuristic setting. “It draws upon the legends of a sky kingdom ruled by a sun god creator, a rebellious hummingbird… who tears through the sky, and the chaski – messengers of the Inca Empire. The piece is also immersed in the concept of pachacuti, the belief that era-worlds undergo cataclysmic transformations every few hundred years. These elements reflect the composer’s own climate activism in both art and life, and her pride as a generational daughter of Indigenous Perú.”
The work is dedicated to the late Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho and is the culmination of a residency with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Frank, whose works have been frequently programmed, was born in Berkeley, CA, to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent. Following in the footsteps of musical heroes Béla Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, she serves as a kind of musical anthropologist. According to her bio, she’s “traveled extensively through South America, and her pieces often reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a Western classical framework that is uniquely her own.”
I haven’t heard this particular piece yet, but her music is colorful and full of incident.
It’s nice to have a Pulitzer winner that can be performed by an actual symphony orchestra again.
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Frank previews “Picaflor” in 90 seconds:
“Escaramuza” (2010)
“Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout” (2001)
“Elegía Andina” (2000)
“Three Latin American Dances” (2004)
Through a strange quirk of fate, because of my illness this weekend, I was unable to attend “Eugene Onegin” at the Met. So I traded my ticket for a seat at the Met debut of Frank’s recent opera, “El último sueño de Frida y Diego,” a magical-realist, upside-down Orpheus and Euridice story about painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
https://www.metopera.org/season/2025-26-season/el-ultimo-sueno-de-frida-y-diegoThere’s my Cinco de Mayo connection!
You don’t have to go to New York to see it. It will be simulcast in select cinemas as part of the “Met Live in HD” series on May 30. Find a theater near you at the link (below the photo, there’s a red tab on the right).
https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/2025-26-season/el-ultimo-sueno-de-frida-y-diego/A 16-second teaser
Congratulations, Gabriela Lena Frank! -
Grieving in Advance of Greiving “John Williams” Book Review
May the Fourth Be with You!
The original “Star Wars” opened on May 25, 1977. But if you think fandom would allow historical accuracy to get in the way of a good pun, you must be a stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder.
For this “Star Wars Day,” I had planned to share my observations concerning the recent John Williams biography by Tim Greiving (published by Oxford University Press in September, but I received my copy for Christmas) – which, providentially, I just happened to finish reading (it is, after all, 600 pages).
Alas, I’m still emerging from the fog of an illness that had me shivering through the weekend, so I’ll be holding off until ORTHODOX STAR WARS DAY, May 25th, the day fans should be celebrating anyway.
There’s a lot to hash over (as you can see from my double-sided notes in the photo), and not all of it is positive. For one thing, I’d be surprised if Oxford University Press even proofread the thing. But some of it is: for as much as I know about John Williams, I still learned a lot.
I’ll try my best to be kind, because it is quite an achievement, and if the guy loves John Williams, he’s a friend, but I’d be soft-peddling if I didn’t say the book is also teeth-gnashingly frustrating to read. It astonishes me that it doesn’t seem to have been the experience of a lot of other reviewers.
You have been forewarned… now anticipate!
In the meantime, try not to drink too much Bantha milk, fanboys. -
Impetuous Youth on “The Lost Chord”
Wagner wrote symphonies? That’s right. He took a crack at writing two of them, in a Beethovenian style, before finding his niche as a revolutionary opera composer.
This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear Wagner’s Symphony in E, alongside early attempts by Gustav Holst and Claude Debussy. Judging from their mature works, these three would be among the least likely to attempt sonata form.
Impetuous youth! I hope you’ll join me for “Bold Heads on Young Shoulders” – audacious composers at the start of their careers strive for symphonic mastery – on “The Lost Chord,” 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 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
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