August 31, 2018

  • More From Hollywood Orchestrator Eugene Zador

     

    The Plains Of Hungary: Music of Eugene Zador

    Zsolt Fejervari, double bass. Kalman Balogh, cimbalom.
    Budapest Symphony Orchestra MAV/Mariusz Smolj
    Naxos 8.573800
    Total Time:  77:51
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    It has been a little while since last we reviewed a release featuring the music of Eugene Zador (1894-1977).  Previous releases in Naxos’ ongoing survey of his music explored his unique blend of Hungarian folk music with Classicism and Romantic style.  Zador is most remembered as one of the great orchestrators of Hollywood’s Golden Age.  He began under contract to M-G-M in 1948 and often went uncredited as composer of many B-picture film scores.  He worked almost exclusively as an orchestrator for Miklos Rozsa until Zador retired in 1963.  For this release of five world premiere recordings, Naxos returns to the same orchestra and forces that have made earlier releases so wonderful to discover.  The music here all comes from the last two decades of Zador’s life.

    The program opens with the Dance Overture (1965).  It is a fascinating work that takes a little motif and subjects it to a host of colors and development.   The music has a wistful character with sweeping American-like bursts that makes this a quite intimate work at times.  As the primary idea moves along it goes through a couple of transformations, but more interestingly, it is transferred across the orchestra.  The result is a little showpiece for orchestra that works fairly well and demonstrates some of the composer’s arranging abilities quite well in a language that has more of a modernist romanticism.  The ending is quite fun and suggests this as a fine piece for lighter programs.

    The more heartfelt Fantasia Hungarica (1970) is in two brief movements.  It was written for one of the leading bass players of the 20th/21st Century Gary Karr.  The opening movement really gets at the remarkably expressive quality that the instrument can create, especially in its higher register.  The faster second movement also lets the soloist create a great display.  This is a really charming piece that should be a repertoire work for all double bassists.  The musical language is quite accessible with a late-romantic tinge that is equally dramatic.  Zsolt Fejervari’s performance is stunning and worth the price of the album alone.  The other solo work is the Rhapsody for Cimbalom and Orchestra (1969) which was commissioned by the California Chamber Symphony in honor of Zador’s 75th birthday.  There are few concerti for this instrument and this exploration of Hungarian folk-like material lends itself to being a piece of nationalistic modernism.  There is a cadenza though which makes the work feel concerto-like.

    At the center of the release is the work that lends itself to the title, The Plains of Hungary (1960).  The elegy was part of a commissioning series sponsored by the New Orleans industrialist Edward Bernard Benjamin.  Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra were on the receiving end of some of these works coordinated through the Eastman School of Music and Howard Hanson.  Zador’s piece was premiered in Philadelphia.  It is a brief folkish work of subdued beauty and a stunning piece that grows into some quite impassioned music reminiscent of a Rozsa love theme.  The orchestra does a marvelous job here with moving wind solos.

    The longest work on the album is the 1964 set of Variations on a Merry Theme.  The work had its premiere in Birmingham, Alabama, in January, 1965.  The seven-bar theme goes through ten permutations that once again demonstrate Zador’s exploration of color.  The opening segment of the theme becomes a unifying force to help start of each variation encouraging the listener to follow the new transformation in communicable language.  Despite its title, the piece certainly has its darker moments with a most unusual variation for trombone and piano that is quite striking.  The harmonic writing here does become slightly more complex making this a much more serious work than one might suspect.  As it moves along it gets even more macabre before we head into a very serious finale.  It really feels like this could be a suite more of a dramatic film score and its cues.

    Finally, the Rhapsody for Orchestra (1961) will have some fingerprint suggestions that will connect well with film music fans.  Zador dedicated this piece to his friend Miklos Rozsa and one can hear a nod to the latter’s recent Ben-Hur score in the opening fanfare and in some of the melodic twists and turns.  The score is a demonstration of Zador’s exploration of modern techniques that recall Bartok most and has a sort of Neo-Classical feel.   A variety of ideas flit across the music with fascinating scoring explorations that make it a very engaging work.  From both this and the previous work, one wonders what Zador’s own film score work might have been like had he taken that direction instead of serving as an orchestrator, a talent surely on display throughout his original music.

    Each of Smolij’s Zador albums has featured some rather wonderful musical discoveries.  Of them, this particular one has plenty of variety to get a good overview of the composer’s general style with rather accessible pieces that continue the thread of blended modern and contemporary styles with that one foot clearly in romanticism.  His sense of drama is also adhered to in these well-shaped performances.

    Mariusz Smolij and the Budapest Symphony continue to show an affinity for these pieces with committed performances.  The performances are wonderfully captured in a good overall sound with a touch of ambience that allows here for the crisp playing.  Zador’s music has a bit more chance to capture the ears of audiences more receptive to tonal music with modern touches and more open to Hollywood-based composer’s concert music.  Start here and consider exploring the previous releases in this series.