Ladies, lords, and gentlepersons all…
Hearken ye to “Picture Perfect” this week for sweet airs from movies set in the Age of Chivalry.
Peradventure ye will encounter sounds and delights from “The Warlord” (Jerome Moross), “El Cid” (Miklós Rózsa), “Lionheart” (Jerry Goldsmith), and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (Erich Wolfgang Korngold).
Verily, chivalry is not dead, this Friday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Though Rafael Sabatini’s popularity has faded somewhat over the decades, in his day the Italian-English writer might have been regarded as the heir apparent to Alexandre Dumas. His bestselling novels are full of romance and swordplay. However, I’m not sure if any of them have really endured in the public consciousness.
Sabatini’s incident-filled pages seem ready-made for the silver screen. Film adaptations of “Scaramouche,” “The Sea Hawk” and “Captain Blood” were made during the silent era. A long-lost John Gilbert classic, adapted from Sabatini’s “Bardelys the Magnificent,” has only recently been rediscovered. Several of these, of course, were remade, more or less, to great success during the era of talking pictures.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s music for the Errol Flynn classics “Captain Blood” (1935) and “The Sea Hawk” (1940). The former film provided Flynn with his breakout role; the latter actually has nothing at all to do with Sabatini’s original plot, despite his onscreen credit.
We’ll also enjoy Alfred Newman’s rollicking main title music for the pirate opus “The Black Swan” (1942), which starred Tyrone Power, and one of Victor Young’s most rousing and melodically inventive scores, for “Scaramouche” (1952), which featured Stewart Granger in probably the best swashbuckler of the 1950s.
“Picture Perfect” sets sail at 6:00 this evening. Tune in a little earlier to enjoy a broadcast concert by Concordia Chamber Players, as always compellingly curated by the ensemble’s artistic director, Michelle Djokic.
The program will include one of Korngold’s finest chamber works, his Suite for Two Violins, Cello and Piano Left-Hand, written for the one-armed Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein (for whom Ravel wrote his famous piano concerto); also the String Quartet No. 1 by Korngold’s teacher, Alexander Zemlinsky. Glenn Smith will be your host for this special concert, which will come your way at a special time.
You’ll get two faces of Korngold today, with Concordia Chamber Players at 4 p.m. EST and on “Picture Perfect” at 6 p.m., on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
Enough already! With another “excessive heat warning” in effect this afternoon and heat index values expected to hit 106, let’s seek some musical relief, shall we, with works evocative of water, of winter, of cooler climes, and of simply kicking back and taking it easy. So far we’ve had refreshment from the likes of Jacques Ibert, Ottorino Respighi, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Joan Tower and Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky. Tune in and chill out until 4:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.
Happy birthday, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). You unleashed my inner pirate and helped shepherd me into the wonderful world of orchestral music. Little did I realize at the time I was dueling my friends with my mother’s curtain rods that you wrote marvelous operas, too.
Korngold conducts “The Adventures of Robin Hood”:
The Sea Hawk:
Renée Fleming sings from “Das Wunder der Heliane”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2x5NgtGSx4
His greatest operatic hit, Marietta’s Lied from “Die tote Stadt,” sung by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoGQd1dsAlw
There’s a moment in the Billy Wilder classic “Sunset Boulevard” when Gloria Swanson, as a faded silent movie actress, remarks, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
Much the same could be said, setting aside the delusions of grandeur, of the great composers who worked during Hollywood’s golden age. It’s ironic that in the current era of vertiginous CGI that so many of our movies seem to lack dimension. There was a time when music with a strong profile was regarded as an essential element of the moviemaking process. It was a way of creating 3-D without the necessity of special glasses.
On May 14, the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra will remind us of what’s been missing, to great extent, from the movie-going experience in recent years. The program “Cinematic Classics” will be presented at Patriots Theater in the Trenton War Memorial. Works by composers Miklós Rózsa, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bernard Herrmann and William Walton prove what can be achieved by a skilled musician with a gift for melody, an innate sense of drama, and good old-fashioned musical know-how.
For those of you who believe that they don’t make ‘em like they used to, this concert is highly recommendable. You can read more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times:
http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/05/classical_music_njcp_performin_1.html
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