Holy cow! One of my favorite movies is 80 years-old this year? Then again, that is SO me.
Join me this Sunday morning on WPRB, as we look back on Oscar history – WAY back.
We’ll hear a rare 1938 recording of selections from “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, with Sir Guy of Gisborne himself, Basil Rathbone, the narrator, and Korngold conducting.
Sir Thomas Beecham will direct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in music by Brian Easdale, written for the 1948 Powell-Pressburger classic, “The Red Shoes.”
And virtually every major composer in Hollywood will come together at the Hollywood Bowl for a concert of now-classic film scores that was originally broadcast on CBS Television in 1963. The event is now looked back upon as “the greatest film music concert in history.” Participants included, among others, Alfred Newman (“How the West Was Won”), David Raksin (“Laura”), Alex North (“Cleopatra”), Johnny Green (“Raintree County”), Franz Waxman (“A Place in the Sun”), Bernard Herrmann (“North by Northwest”), Dimitri Tiomkin (“High Noon”), and Miklos Rozsa (“Ben-Hur”).
An album was released on LP, but understandably the three-hour concert was severely truncated. This was somewhat remedied on a CD-reissue, that included 70 minutes of music. Among the casualties, however, was Elmer Bernstein conducting the theme to “The Magnificent Seven.” We’ll restore that cut when we hear the concert this morning.
Also in the audience was Max Steiner, whose music for “A Summer Place” and “Gone with the Wind” were on the program. “Gone with the Wind” didn’t make the album, but we will more than remedy the exclusion with an extended suite conducted by Steiner himself.
Collectively, these composers earned over sixty Academy Awards and over 300 Oscar nominations.
I hope you’ll travel back with me to a time when Oscar really was gold, this Sunday morning from 7 to 10 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. Scores will be settled, on Classic Ross Amico.
More about the legendary “Music in Hollywood” concert here:
http://www.filmmusicsociety.org/news_events/features/2013/092313.html