With Passover and Easter right around the corner, we’re entering the peak season for Bible movies. This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s an hour of music from epics inspired by the Old Testament – including “Samson and Delilah” (Victor Young), “Solomon and Sheba” (Mario Nascimbene), “Sodom and Gomorrah” (Miklós Rózsa) and “The Ten Commandments” (Elmer Bernstein).
We begin and end with two Cecil B. DeMille productions. DeMille could always be counted on to give his audience a good show. Both “Samson” and “The Ten Commandments” feature sultry temptresses, violent, bare-chested men, and plenty of austere moralizing. The climactic special effects in both films are still sublime.
Tyrone Power was originally cast as Solomon in King Vidor’s “Solomon and Sheba.” However, he died of a massive heart attack during shooting (at the age of 44), paving the way for Yul Brynner to assume the role of the wise king. Brynner, of course, would later become DeMille’s pharaoh Rameses. With Gina Lollobrigida as the Queen of Sheba, you know there has to be an orgiastic dance.
Miklós Rózsa characterized “Sodom of Gomorrah” as “an intriguing subject which developed into a bad picture,” and most critics agreed. Any film that casts Stewart Granger as Lot should be taken with a pillar of salt. Rózsa determined not to score any more Biblical epics after “Sodom,” though his music is nothing to be ashamed of. It possesses that classic Rózsa epic sound, much beloved, thanks to his work on “Quo Vadis,” “Ben-Hur” and “King of Kings.”
Chariots! Tunics! Histrionic acting! It’s going to be epic, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, 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 – 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
Open sesame! It’s an Aladdin’s Cave of cinematic delights.
This week on “Picture Perfect,” the focus is on tales from “The Arabian Nights.”
These traditional folk stories from the Orient have come down to us filtered through the sensibilities of Western translators. Further translation was required to get the stories from page to screen; so it’s hardly surprising to find Sinbad, for instance, fighting a giant walrus at the North Pole.
The film versions are often showcases for the work of production designers and special effects artists, but composers have certainly gotten in on the act with suitably imaginative scores.
Bernard Herrmann lent plenty of color and wit to the skeleton duel in “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” (1958) by employing a battery of castanets, xylophone, and brass. Stop motion artist Ray Harryhausen was responsible for the memorable effects. “Sinbad” proved to be a dry run for the climax of “Jason and the Argonauts,” in which Harryhausen outdid himself by animating not one, but seven skeletons, and again, Herrmann supplied the music.
Harryhausen animated two further Sinbad adventures – “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1974) and “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” (1977). Over the course of the three “Sinbad” films, audiences were treated to fantastic encounters with, in addition to the skeleton, a Cyclops, a roc, a dragon, a statue of the goddess Kali, a centaur, a giant walrus, and a saber-tooth tiger, among others.
“Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” was scored by Roy Budd. Budd’s reputation was largely that of a jazz musician and composer. He wrote scores for over 50 films, including “Get Carter” and “The Wild Geese,” before his early death of a brain hemorrhage, at the age of 46, in 1993.
Walt Disney created a modern classic in “Aladdin” (1992). The music was by Alan Menken, with lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice. “Aladdin” won Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“A Whole New World”). Menken has a whole shelf full of Oscars for his work for Disney. Need I say, Robin Williams was the voice of the manic, freewheeling Genie?
Rex Ingram’s Genie steals the show in “The Thief of Bagdad” (1940). Ingram emerges from his magic lamp and looms over a cowering Sabu, whom he addresses as “Little Master of the Universe.” The beach resounds with his maniacal laughter. There was an earlier, justly celebrated, silent version of “Thief,” with Douglas Fairbanks. The remake splits the thief and the prince into two separate characters. Sabu plays the incorrigible Abu (the thief), and Conrad Veidt is his nemesis, the treacherous vizier Jaffar.
The score is by three-time Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa. Rózsa was in London, in the employ of Alexander Korda, when the lavish Technicolor production was moved to Hollywood on account of the Blitz. Rózsa would go on to become one of Hollywood’s greatest composers. His music for “Ben-Hur” alone has earned him a place in the film music pantheon. He never wrote a more charming score, however, than he did for this.
I hope you’ll join me for an hour of cinematic enchantments. That’s “A Thousand and One Nights at the Movies,” 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
He liked his keys and he liked his cards. One hundred years ago today, pianist and bridge master Leonard Pennario was born in Buffalo, New York.
Pennario gave his first public performance in a department store there at the age of 7. After his father’s shoe business collapsed during the Great Depression, he and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was 10. Los Angeles was to remain his base of operations for the rest of his career, until his retirement in 2005.
Pennario was a born musician with an outstanding memory. At the age of 12, he was recommended by Sir Eugene Goossens to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as a substitute for an ailing pianist. Asked if he knew Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Pennario said yes, when in fact he had never even heard it. He was able to learn the piece in six days, without missing any school. His debut was a triumph and the beginning of an extraordinary career.
He rose to prominence without ever attending a music college or entering a piano competition. He did, however, take lessons from Isabelle Vengerova, whose other students included Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Gary Graffman, and Abbey Simon. He also studied composition with Ernst Toch at the University of Southern California.
He served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, and made his debut with the New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodzinski, in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, while still in uniform, in 1943.
Temperamentally, he was the polar opposite of Glenn Gould, who, early on, abandoned public concertizing, in favor of the hermetic environment of the recording studio, or even Vladimir Horowitz who suffered harrowing bouts of stage fright. Pennario adored performing before an audience, and his magnetism and self-confidence were evident to those who were lucky enough to have heard him live. His was an unshakeable technique, characterized by clarity, speed, and accuracy, combined with a sense of spontaneity and soulfulness.
His recordings of Gershwin and Rachmaninoff have seldom, if ever, been out of the catalogue. His “Rhapsody in Blue” was one of the most popular of all classical LPs, and he was the first pianist after the composer to record all the Rachmaninoff concertos. In 1959, he was declared the best-selling American pianist. He was also the first to record the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. In all, he made over 60 records.
Pennario’s association with Hollywood unsettled some musical elitists, especially when he recorded an album like “Concertos Under the Stars,” featuring Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto,” among other potboilers, or when he adapted his own “Midnight on the Cliffs” for the Doris Day film “Julie.” He dated Elizabeth Taylor and palled around with Judy Garland. He was an early champion of the concert music of Academy Award-winning film composer Miklós Rózsa. In the meantime, he was also recording piano trios with Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.
In addition to being an exceptional pianist, he was an accomplished card player. He discovered bridge in 1965, formed a celebrity quartet with Don Adams (of “Get Smart”), band leader Les Brown, and Joan Benny (Jack Benny’s daughter), and under the tutelage of his friend, columnist Alfred Sheinwold, attained an enviable level of expertise. In fact, he became a Life Master in tournament bridge, and earned a listing in the Official Encyclopedia of Bridge.
Apparently, Sheinwold shared Pennario’s passion for music. During their get-togethers the pianist would sometimes accompany him in lieder of Schubert and Brahms. Said Pennario, “He had a fine tenor voice… I would accompany him and he in turn would partner me in tournaments. Each of us felt he had the better deal!”
In the late 1990s, the onset of Parkinson’s Disease forced Pennario into retirement. Bridge became the solace of his old age. He died in La Jolla, California, on June 28, 2008, at the age of 83.
Fondly remembering Leonard Pennario on the 100th anniversary of his birth!
“Rhapsody in Blue”
With Fiedler and the Boston Pops: Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” César Franck’s “Symphonic Variations,” and Henry Charles Litolff’s Scherzo from the Concerto Symphonique No. 4
Live performance of Miklós Rózsa’s Piano Concerto, with post-performance interview
Arthur Honegger’s “Pacific 231” was first performed on this date, one hundred years ago.
Originally, Honegger had given the work a more generic title, “Mouvement symphonique,” asserting that he had written it as “an exercise in building momentum while the tempo of the piece slows.” However, like Dvořák, he was widely known to be a train enthusiast. It seems almost too convenient that the music resembles the journey of a steam locomotive.
In Whyte notation, such a locomotive would be designated as 4-6-2 (four pilot wheels, six powered and coupled driving wheels, and two trailing wheels). However, in France, where axles rather than wheels are counted, the arrangement would be 2-3-1.
The composer once confided, “I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses.”
“Pacific 231” is one of the composer’s most frequently performed works.
In 1948, Jean Mitry choreographed and edited an award-winning film inspired by the piece, which employs Honegger’s music as the soundtrack. The composer was always cagey about tying music, which he regarded as an absolute art form, to visuals in the minds of his audiences, so he was quick to indicate that he had come up with his titles after the fact. Perhaps the film did him no favors. You can watch it here:
Ironically, Honegger enjoyed a successful side career as, that’s right, a film composer. It was his advice that helped a struggling young artist by the name of Miklós Rózsa to discover his métier. Rózsa, of course, went on to win three Academy Awards and is perhaps best known for his music for “Ben-Hur.”
How canny is it to give your music a descriptive title, even it is a bit after the fact? Honegger composed three “mouvements symphoniques.” Beside “Pacific 231,” there’s also “Rugby” (actually my favorite of the three). The third? It has no descriptive title. Unsurprisingly, it remains the least well-known.
But “Pacific 231?” A hundred years later, it’s still a runaway train.
Honegger probably would have hated this video, because of all the images of locomotives, but the performance, with Ernest Ansermet conducting, is a classic.
