This week on “Picture Perfect,” get ready for an exercise in postmodern self-reflexivity, as we enjoy music from movies about music and musicians.
Federico Fellini’s “Orchestra Rehearsal” (1978) is a mock-documentary that presents the symphony orchestra as a metaphor for the human condition. Full of political overtones, the film explores the joys, sorrows, frustrations and triumphs of the musicians, who struggle with the concepts of individual liberty, tyranny and the collective good. The project would mark the final collaboration between Fellini and Nino Rota. The two artists first came together in 1952 on Fellini’s “The White Sheik.” They would go on to create such classics as “La Strada,” “Nights of Cabiria,” “La dolce vita” and “8 ½.”
We’ll also hear music from the Canadian art house hit “The Red Violin” (1998). The film traces the history of the fictional title instrument from its creation in 17th century Cremona to the present day. The violin passes through the hands of a child prodigy, into those of a romantic virtuoso in the Paganini mold; then to China during the Cultural Revolution; and finally to a Canadian auction house. John Corigliano wrote the Academy Award-winning music, which is performed on the soundtrack by violinist Joshua Bell.
Finally, we’ll turn to a classical music film noir from Hollywood’s Golden Age. “Deception” (1946) tells the tale of a dangerous love triangle between Bette Davis, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains. Much of the plot hinges on the premiere of a new cello concerto by a celebrated – though fictional – composer, played by Rains, who puts a fragile cellist, his rival in love, played by Henreid, through the psychological wringer. The music, which serves as both underscore and crux of the story, is by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The composer subsequently published the on-screen concerto as his Op. 37.
All aboard the musical ouroboros! Join me for music from movies about music and musicians, on “Picture Perfect,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
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 – ALL NEW! – 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
PHOTO: Henreid wore a special jacket to accommodate the arms of two professional cellists who stood behind him as he emoted. On the film’s soundtrack the concerto was performed by Eleanor Aller Slatkin, mother of Leonard Slatkin.
Before John Williams, there was Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Korngold’s music for “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938) was every bit as influential to me, in terms of introducing me to the wonders of orchestral music, as the score to “Star Wars.” Clearly, it also impacted John Williams, as the music for his biggest blockbusters adheres to the Korngold template of leitmotifs, lush orchestration, and swashbuckling action cues.
Williams has cited Korngold’s main title music for “Kings Row,” in particular, as one of his inspirations for “Star Wars.” The bold, opulent, classic Hollywood imprint is obvious. Listeners coming cold to “Kings Row” detect the influence immediately. Which is interesting. It’s there in the orchestration, of course, and in the bold fanfares, but it isn’t so blatant as some of the other, more brazen allusions that occur throughout Williams’ score, which I’m sure I’m not alone in contending is a post-modern masterpiece. It’s only little minds that scream theft. Good artists copy; great artists steal! (I believe Stravinsky stole that from Picasso.)
In case you are unfamiliar with his backstory, years before he came to Hollywood, Korngold was a child prodigy, the toast of Vienna. Gustav Mahler declared him a genius, and Richard Strauss claimed he was terrified by the amount of talent exhibited by one so young. His works were championed by the most esteemed musicians of the day. He was especially highly-regarded for his operas, with “Die tote Stadt” (“The Dead City”), given a double premiere in Hamburg and Cologne, the high-water mark of his success.
Korngold first came to Hollywood to assist Viennese theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt in bringing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to the big screen for Warner Bros. This is the version with James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, and Mickey Rooney (as Puck). So impressed was Warner with the score, freely adapted from the music of Mendelssohn, that they didn’t want to let this world-class composer go. He was a particularly nice fit for the pageantry and swagger of the Errol Flynn classics.
Fortunately, Korngold was at work on “Robin Hood” when the Nazis marched into Austria. He and his family found refuge in the company of many other notable European exiles on the paradisal West Coast of the United States. But the luster soon dulled. Korngold vowed to compose no concert music while Hitler remained in power. After the war, he produced a Violin Concerto, which was savaged by one critic as “more corn than gold,” and a heart-breaking Symphony in F-sharp, which exudes longing for a lost world. Both assimilated themes from his film scores.
He never lived to see his reputation rebound. However, since the 1970s, the popularity of his film music and critical esteem for his concert music have been on an upward trajectory.
I’ve always loved “Kings Row,” even though the film is something of a curate’s egg. It’s actually a very grim story, anticipating the work of David Lynch, in some respects, as it gradually reveals the dark underbelly of small-town life in the Midwest. But it’s nowhere near as dark as the source material, a bleak-as-hell novel by Henry Bellamann.
“Kings Row,” the book, is a massive downer. Somehow, it also became a runaway bestseller.
Interestingly, Bellamann also had a musical background. Following his graduation from Westminster College (unrelated to the Princeton institution) in his hometown of Fulton, Missouri, he studied piano at the University of Denver. He went on to teach music at several girls’ schools in the South, while in the summers, he continued his studies in Europe with Charles-Marie Widor and Isador Philipp. Bellamann would hold several prominent administrative and teaching positions in the U.S., including director of the Juilliard Musical Foundation, dean of the Curtis Institute of Music, and professor of music at Vassar College.
As you can imagine, the book caused quite a stir in Fulton, but not because of its success. Rather, a few too many people and institutions recognized themselves in the extremely unflattering narrative! Allegedly the book was banned from the town library, and Bellamann was the target of at least one indignant editorial in the local newspaper.
“Kings Row” is one of the most subversive films of Hollywood’s golden age. How it managed to get around the Hays Code is anybody’s guess, but I’m putting my money on Korngold’s score, which breathes uplift and hope into what could have been an unrelentingly bleak story (as it is in the novel). Also, the ending was changed, such an obvious overcompensation, with the climax an almost ludicrous eruption of joy. It’s a neat trick, as somehow, in the film, not only is the wicked in human nature balanced by the good, but the whole is infused with an undercurrent of nostalgia for a passing world. It’s kind of like how people choose to remember “It’s a Wonderful Life,” even though you have to go through hell before you get to heaven.
Amusingly, from the title, Korngold thought he was being assigned yet another historical adventure, which is why the theme is so wildly over the top. By 1942, Korngold could do pomp and braggadocio in his sleep. When he learned of his mistake, he just kept it. And what a happy accident! The film is so much better – and so much more bearable – than it would have been without it. After all, how much madness, suicide, amputation, and incest can one take, especially in the 1940s? It really is quite the sleight of hand. Now I want to watch it again!
To this day, I waver as to whether Korngold or Williams is my favorite film composer. There are others I may revere more than either of them, but these two give me the most pleasure.
May I obey all your commands with equal pleasure, Sire! Happy birthday, Erich Wolfgang Korngold!
“Kings Row”
John Williams talks Korngold with Leonard Slatkin
Good nine-minute primer on E.W.K.
Violin Concerto
Music as good as spring itself: the Sinfonietta, composed at 15
Am I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch?
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll celebrate William Shakespeare, just a few days shy of the anniversary of his birth, on April 23 (observed). Tune in for an hour of music from film adaptations of his comedies. We’ll enjoy selections from “As You Like It” (William Walton), “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Korngold), “The Taming of the Shrew” (Nino Rota), and “Much Ado About Nothing” (Patrick Doyle), even as we wryly acknowledge that the course of true love never did run smooth.
What fools these mortals be!
Verily, the wise ones know to stream it, wherever they are, at the link, this Friday evening at 8:00 EDT/5:00 PDT!
We don’t know exactly when Shakespeare was born. We do know that he was baptized on April 26, 1564. Scholars must have found the potential for symmetry irresistible: since he died on April 23, 1616, the Bard’s birthday has traditionally been observed on the same date as his death.
Of course, he’s one of the most influential artists who ever lived. Regardless of what anyone may argue to the contrary, his relevancy will never wane, for as long as humans continue to exist. Who knows, maybe longer. I’ll have to consult Sycorax.
In the meantime, I’ll be doing my small part, in anticipation of the Bard’s birthday anniversary, with three programs of music inspired by his works.
First, on “Picture Perfect” (tonight at 8:00 EDT/5:00 PDT), we’ll have an hour of selections from cinematic adaptations of the comedies, including “As You Like It” (William Walton), “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Erich Wolfgang Korngold), “The Taming of the Shrew” (Nino Rota), and “Much Ado About Nothing” (Patrick Doyle).
Then, on “Sweetness and Light” (Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PST), we’ll do our best to charm and to cheer with Shakespearean inspirations by Johan Wagenaar, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Felix Mendelssohn (transcribed by Sergei Rachmaninoff), Sir Thomas Morley, and again, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (same composer, different work).
Finally, on “The Lost Chord,” power corrupts, as we juxtapose musical adaptations of “Macbeth,” by William Walton and Sir Arthur Sullivan, with works inspired by Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones,” by Louis Gruenberg and Heitor Villa-Lobos, on a program titled “Power Plays” (Saturday at 7:00 p.m. EDT/4:00 p.m. PDT).
If music be the food of love, stream on, on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein lost his right arm during the First World War. Rather than abandon his career, he commissioned works for the left hand from some of the great composers of his day, including Benjamin Britten, Sergei Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, and of course Maurice Ravel.
This week on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll highlight two of Wittgenstein’s lesser-known commissions.
In 1922, Wittgenstein approached Paul Hindemith – at 27, a rising star of German modernism, indeed the radical avant-garde – to produce his “Klaviermusik mit Orchester.”
Wittgenstein’s reaction to the piece is unknown, although we can easily surmise. He never played the work in public. Furthermore, since he had secured exclusive performance rights, he wouldn’t allow anyone else to play it, either.
Following the pianist’s death in 1961, his widow relocated to a farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where for decades she kept all of her husband’s belongings in a single room. When the estate was finally catalogued in 2002, a copy of the Hindemith concerto was discovered among Wittgenstein’s effects, along with other scores, correspondence, and items of interest, including locks of both Beethoven’s and Brahms’ hair.
It was Leon Fleisher who gave the belated premiere of the concerto, some 80 years after it was written, with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. I was present at the U.S. East Coast premiere, with Fleisher and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. Listen carefully to see if you can hear me applauding, in a recording made at Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall, at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, on April 27, 2008.
As a rule, Wittgenstein gravitated toward composers of a more Romantic bent. Erich Wolfgang Korngold was one of music’s most astounding prodigies, a Viennese wunderkind and celebrated opera composer, who later achieved world fame in Hollywood. There, he produced over a dozen classic scores, for films like “Captain Blood,” “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” and “The Sea Hawk.”
His greatest operatic success was “Die tote Stadt,” given its debut in 1920. Korngold was 23 years-old. In 1922, he became the first composer to be approached by Wittgenstein for a left-hand piano concerto. (It was the same year, by the way, that Wittgenstein enlisted Hindemith.) The result was the Piano Concerto in C-sharp. On today’s program, Marc-André Hamelin will be the soloist, an outstanding virtuoso figuratively playing with one hand tied behind his back.
Interestingly, Wittgenstein much preferred this piece to Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand. It was the Ravel, commissioned in 1929, that would secure his place in music history, but he must have felt Korngold’s Romanticism and sense of struggle played more to his strengths. For whatever reason, Korngold became a Wittgenstein favorite. In the few minutes remaining at the end of the hour, Leon Fleisher will return to the keyboard for a performance of the “Lied,” the ardent slow movement of Korngold’s Suite for Two Violins, Cello and Piano Left-Hand.
I hope you’ll join me for “What’s Left?” – rarely-heard commissions by Paul Wittgenstein – on “The Lost Chord,” 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 those of you listening in the East. Here are the respective air-times for all three of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EST)
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday on KWAX at 8:00 AM PACIFIC TIME (11:00 AM EST)
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PM PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EST)
Stream all three, at the times indicated, by following the link!
