Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Film Music

Korngold’s Hollywood Dream: Shakespeare & Film

This will likely be my last Shakespeare post for a while – the 500th anniversary of the Bard’s birth falls in 2064 – so enjoy it. We wrap up our month-long commemoration of the quadricentennial of Shakespeare’s death, on April 23, 1616, by revisiting “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Erich Wolfgang Korngold went from being one of Europe’s great musical prodigies – his works admired by Mahler, Strauss and Puccini, and performed by Schnabel, Weingartner and Klemperer – to becoming one of Hollywood’s transformative film composers. He is a link from Old World opulence to New World fantasy, his music gracing a number of Warner Brothers’ greatest historical adventures. He was also an opera composer. In fact, his opera “Die tote Stadt” was the runaway hit of 1920.

It was at the invitation of theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt that Korngold came to Hollywood in 1934 for a big screen adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The film starred James Cagney, Dick Powell and Olivia de Havilland, in her silver screen debut, with Mickey Rooney an irrepressible Puck.

For the project, Korngold adapted the famous incidental music of Felix Mendelssohn, interweaving material from Mendelssohn’s symphonies and orchestrating some of the “Songs without Words.” Yet the music bears Korngold’s unmistakable stamp, as you’ll hear in the opening fanfare and chorus, crafted from raw material found in the “Scottish Symphony” and marked by plenty of Korngoldian pageantry and swagger.

The composer drew on his theatrical experience, even conducting the actors as they spoke their dialogue in order to get the tempos he desired.

Korngold’s work on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” led to further offers from Warner Brothers, under terms he couldn’t refuse. In the meantime, the Nazis rolled into Austria, effectively sealing off his return to Europe. Vienna’s loss was Hollywood’s gain. Korngold would become the crown jewel of Warners’ music department. His excellence was recognized with two Academy Awards, for “Anthony Adverse,” in 1936, and “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” in 1938.

I hope you’ll join me, over hill, over dale, for Korngold’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

#Shakespeare400

April 29, 2016
Richard Rodney Bennett at 80 A Neglected Genius

Today would have been the 80th birthday of Richard Rodney Bennett. Bennett could do it all, from twelve tone to torch songs, from film music to jazz. He was a brilliant musician who never really seemed to find his niche and continues to be undersold, despite the knighthood he acquired in 1998.

Bennett studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, with Howard Ferguson and Lennox Berkeley. Ferguson regarded him as perhaps the greatest talent of his generation, though lacking in a personal style – an assessment with which I happen to disagree, detecting the same fingerprints on his twelve tone works as on his compositions of more immediate appeal.

It’s interesting to note that Bennett also studied in Paris with Pierre Boulez, from 1957 to 1959. He had been exposed to serialism while attending summer courses in Darmstadt.

Bennett himself taught for a time at RAM (he was eventually the Chair of Composition there, from 1994 to the year 2000) and at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. For the last three decades of his life, he maintained a residence in New York City. He died there in 2012. His remains are buried in Brooklyn.

In all, he composed over 200 concert works, and 50 film scores, including music for “Far from the Madding Crowd,” ‘Nicholas and Alexandra,” “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Enchanted April” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

For 50 years, he was a writer and performer of jazz songs. He also arranged classics of the Great American Songbook.

The further his career progressed, the more tonal, melodic and ingratiating his concert music became. In point of fact, Bennett’s serialism had always been a personalized one. He later repudiated his serial works, stating, “I wouldn’t want anybody now to play my pieces from those days, when I was turning out that atonal stuff.”

Aside from his activities as a film composer and cabaret performer, he composed three symphonies, 17 concertos, five operas and dozens of chamber works. He had the attention and respect of his peers, with many of the world’s top musicians commissioning and performing his works, yet his music remains, somehow, less known than it should be.

Be that as it may, happy birthday, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett!

Here is the world premiere of his Symphony No. 2, in a concert broadcast from 1968:

His ingratiating “Partita for Orchestra,” from 1995:

Mov’t I: “Intrada” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRtZr4wdPNg

Mov’t II “Lullaby” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXDym-RkuB8

Mov’t III “Finale” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo6YheAcwLE

Richard Rodney Bennett sings torch songs:

Film music from “The Devil’s Disciple” (1959):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e2pCQpONV0

“Four Weddings and a Funeral” (1994):

“Murder on the Orient Express” (1974):

PHOTO: Bennett wrote this “Suite for Skip and Sadie” for his two cats

March 29, 2016
Classic Film Scores for Academy Awards Weekend

We’re heading into Academy Awards weekend. This week on “Picture Perfect” we’ll do our best to get you in the mood, with a baker’s dozen of classic film themes. We’ll hear music from “Gone With the Wind,” “Ben-Hur,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Out of Africa,” “Exodus,” “Schindler’s List,” “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “Around the World in 80 Days,” “The Godfather Part II,” “Tom Jones,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Titanic” and “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.”

The 88th Academy Awards, need I say, will take place on Sunday night.

Join me this evening at 6:00 ET, with a repeat tomorrow morning at 6; or listen to it later as webcast at wwfm.org. I’ll try to exert my influence to get the sound file posted by Sunday, if you’d like to call up the stream for a little pre-Oscar fun. Last week’s show, devoted to this year’s nominees, has already been posted.

#AcademyAwards #Oscars #FilmMusic #FilmScores

February 26, 2016
Remembering Jerry Goldsmith Film Music Legend

Poor Jerry Goldsmith. He wrote some of the great film scores of his time, including those for “The Sand Pebbles” (1966), “The Blue Max” (1966), “The Flim-Flam Man” (1967), “Planet of the Apes” (1968), “Patton” (1970), “Papillon” (1973), “Chinatown” (1974), “The Wind and the Lion” (1975), “MacArthur” (1977), “The Boys from Brazil” (1978), “The Great Train Robbery” (1979), “Alien” (1979, butchered in the sound editing), and “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (1979).

For television, he wrote for “Dr. Kildare,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Gunsmoke,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Waltons.”

By the 1980s, the films began to get weaker. It seemed like Goldsmith was always getting tossed the projects John Williams passed on, or cheap knockoffs of Williams’ successes. By his final decade, he was stuck writing for such garbage as “The Mummy” (1999), “The Haunting” (1999), and “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” (2003). A notable exception was “L.A. Confidential” (1997), but rarely were his later projects up to his talent.

Goldsmith had a reputation for being able to compose at white heat, so he was frequently called upon to write replacement scores for films like “The River Wild” (1994), “Air Force One” (1997) and “The 13th Warrior” (1999). He composed and recorded the score to “Chinatown,” one of the best of the 1970s, in only ten days.

Incredibly, he was honored with only a single Academy Award, for his influential score to “The Omen” (1976). Goldsmith died in 2004, at the age of 75. If he were to come back today, he would mop the joint with all the Hans Zimmer clones of the world.

Happy birthday, Jerry Goldsmith. I sure does miss you.

#JerryGoldsmith

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.:

Planet of the Apes:

Patton:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdEy4GneZfw

Chinatown:

The Wind and the Lion:

The Omen (perfect for Lent):

Star Trek: The Motion Picture:

February 10, 2016
Princeton Symphony Orchestra’s Silver Screen Pops

The shrieking violins of “Psycho.” The menacing double-basses of “Jaws.” Both exemplify the lingering power of exceptionally well-suited music and visuals.

Both will be represented on a concert of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, which will take place at Princeton University’s Richardson Audition tomorrow night at 8:00. The orchestra’s annual “Saturday Evening POPS!” is a sequel of sorts to last year’s “Silver Screen Salute.”

The program will include music from classic films like “Ben-Hur” and “Star Wars,” with songs from more recent favorites like “Titanic” and “Frozen.”

Lucas Richman will conduct. Richman has worked in films for nearly a quarter century. He’ll be joined by Broadway vocalist Jessica Hendy for some classic love songs by George Gershwin and Marvin Hamlisch.

You can read more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/02/classical_music_pso_cnso_perfo.html

PHOTO: The hand of Hendy

February 5, 2016

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