• Film Composers’ Concert Music

    Film Composers’ Concert Music

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    What’s that you say? You could care less about the Oscars? Perhaps then you’d be interested in a little counterprogramming. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll both deny and complement the ceremony by listening to concert works by composers better known for their work in film.

    Franz Waxman was a two-time Academy Award winner, honored with back-to-back Oscars, in 1950 and 1951, for his work on “Sunset Boulevard” and “A Place in the Sun.” Some of his other classic scores include those for “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Rebecca,” “Rear Window,” “Peyton Place” and “The Nun’s Story.”

    In 1955, he was traveling from California to Zurich to conduct a new piece commissioned by Rolf Liebermann. When Waxman reached New York he was met with a request from Lieberman’s office for program notes for the impending premiere. Waxman was forced to admit he hadn’t yet begun work on the piece, which he had planned to write during the ocean voyage. Fortunately, he was accustomed from his experience in Hollywood to write very quickly. The result was his “Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and Timpani.”

    Five-time Academy Award winner John Williams – whose 51st nominated score, for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” is in contention tonight – is of course very well-known for his collaborations with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Over the years, he’s also accrued an impressive quantity of concertos. One of the more immediately attractive of these is his Tuba Concerto of 1985, written for the 100th anniversary of the Boston Pops.

    Finally, we’ll turn to three-time Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa, honored for his work on Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” in 1945, the Ronald Colman thriller “A Double Life” in 1947, and “Ben-Hur” in 1959. He also composed quite a bit of concert music, including concertos for Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, Janos Starker, Leonard Pennario and Pinchas Zukerman.

    Rózsa, Hungarian by birth, turned to film after a period of struggle as a young artist in Paris, where he learned from Arthur Honegger that he was able to pay the rent by supplementing his concert music with cinematic efforts. Rózsa’s “Theme, Variations and Finale,” Op. 13, of 1933, preceded the start of his film career by a few years. He revised the piece in 1943, by which time he had already completed his classic fantasy scores for Alexander Korda’s “The Thief of Bagdad” and “Jungle Book,” and was on the verge of becoming a leading composer of film noir.

    “Theme, Variations and Finale” received performances by Charles Munch, Karl Böhm, Georg Solti, and Eugene Ormandy. It was also one of the works that featured on the legendary concert that launched Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic, on November 14, 1943, when the young assistant conductor substituted at the last minute for an ailing Bruno Walter.

    I hope you’ll join me for an hour of concert music by composers better known for their work in film – “Against Type” on “The Lost Chord” – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    PHOTOS: Has anyone here seen Kelly? (Clockwise from left) John Williams wins the Oscar for “Star Wars;” Franz Waxman and Miklós Rózsa receive their awards from the hands of Gene Kelly


  • Oscar Scores Webcast Your Movie Music Party

    Oscar Scores Webcast Your Movie Music Party

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    Due to its timely nature, my annual WWFM Oscar Party has been posted as webcast. I can’t promise you it’s the greatest thing ever (I didn’t eat lunch yesterday), but there’s plenty of enjoyable music from 18 films, including all five of this year’s nominees for Best Original Score (“Phantom Thread,” “Dunkirk,” “The Shape of Water,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”). Get yourself primed for the Oscars with three hours of classic and contemporary film scores. Follow the link, and crunch away.

    http://wwfm.org/post/enjoy-picture-perfect-oscar-party-friday-afternoon


  • Hollywood’s Golden Age Remembered on WPRB

    Hollywood’s Golden Age Remembered on WPRB

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    What the hell happened to Hollywood? As those of us who remember “the way it used to be” brace ourselves for another year of insipid red carpet banter, I thought we’d take a look back, this Sunday morning on WPRB, and revisit a lost era of glamour and dreams by way of recordings of music from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

    Join me for highlights from a concert originally broadcast on CBS Television back in 1963. The program, “Music from Hollywood,” was made up of classic film scores mostly conducted by the composers themselves at the Hollywood Bowl. These included “How the West Was Won” (Alfred Newman), “Laura” (David Raksin), “Cleopatra” (Alex North), “Raintree County” (Johnny Green), “A Place in the Sun” (Franz Waxman), “North by Northwest” (Bernard Herrmann), “High Noon” (Dimitri Tiomkin), and “Ben-Hur” (Miklos Rozsa). You couldn’t find that much compositional talent in Hollywood now if you tried.

    We’ll also hear a rare 1938 recording of selections from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Academy Award winning music from “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” with Sir Guy of Gisborne himself, Basil Rathbone, the narrator, and Korngold conducting.

    And Sir Thomas Beecham will take the podium for award-winning music by Brian Easdale written for the unnerving Powell-Pressburger classic, “The Red Shoes.”

    Get ready to steel yourself for the Oscars with relics of bygone quality, this Sunday morning from 7 to 11 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. At what point did they call “class dismissed,” wonders Classic Ross Amico?


  • Jesús López Cobos Remembered

    Jesús López Cobos Remembered

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    Very sorry to learn of the passing of conductor Jesús López-Cobos. His high profile in the United States came with the music directorship of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1986 to 2001 (he was later its Conductor Emeritus) and a recording contract with Telarc records. I can’t believe he was already 78 years-old. Time is ruthless.

    His obituary in Gramophone:

    https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/jes%C3%BAs-l%C3%B3pez-cobos-has-died-at-the-age-of-78

    An interview with Bruce Duffie:

    http://www.bruceduffie.com/lopez-cobos.html

    Conducting Richard Strauss’ “An Alpine Symphony” in Galicia:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zljMojzEVuU


  • Movie Music Oscars Special on The Classical Network

    Movie Music Oscars Special on The Classical Network

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    “You see, this is my life. It always will be. There’s nothing else. Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up!”

    Join me (and Norma Desmond) this Friday afternoon on The Classical Network as we mark the 90th anniversary of the Academy Awards with a SPECIAL THREE-HOUR BROADCAST celebrating the history of music in the movies. Hear selections from all five of this year’s nominees for Best Original Score, alongside music from some of the best-loved and most-honored movies of all time – including “The Godfather,” “Star Wars,” “Titanic,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Ben-Hur,” and “Gone with the Wind.”

    The music IS big; it’s the PICTURES that got small. The playlist will be positively cinematic, this Friday from 4 to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.


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