This week on “Picture Perfect,” Peter Lorre gets more than his share of left-hand piano repertoire, in “The Beast with Five Fingers” (1946). Max Steiner’s score, built on Brahms’ transcription of the Bach Chaconne, is one of the highlights of an hour of music from movies about madness and the piano.
The program will also include a macabre concerto by Bernard Herrmann, written for the Laird Cregar thriller “Hangover Square” (1945), about a deranged concert pianist in fog-shrouded London. Alan Alda seeks fame at all costs – even Satanism – in “The Mephisto Waltz” (1971), with music by Jerry Goldsmith, and just a touch of Franz Liszt. And power-mad pedagogue Hans Conried lords it over a legion of his long-suffering pupils, in the Dr. Seuss fantasy “The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T” (1953), with music and songs by Frederick Hollander.
We’re mad about the piano this week, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.