The Golden Age of Hollywood ****

JEROME MOROSS/MAX STEINER/MIKLOS ROZSA/BERNARD HERRMANN/DMITRI TIOMKIN/ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD/RICHARD ADDINSELL/ELMER BERNSTEIN

RPO 017

15 tracks – 77:26

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra averted disappearing altogether decades ago when Louis Clark and the ensemble released the multi-million selling disco album, Hooked on Classics.  Over the years the orchestra has classed up what used to be referred to as “elevator music” while still maintaining a number of superb classical releases.  It is this versatility which can sometimes be overlooked for “serious” ensembles.  Film music collectors may recall several fine film music compilations with the orchestra under the baton of Elmer Bernstein, Carl Davis, and John Scott.  Over the past decade, the orchestra has released on its own label a variety of contemporary film music, often conducted by the composers, from their concert series.  The discs have been exclusively available from the orchestra’s website.  The Golden Age of Hollywood comes from their Here Come the Classics series of which this 2006 release is volume 17!  One can hope that more film compilations will find their way to the states. 

The current release will best be enjoyed if one simply forgets its title and just listens to the resulting music since much of the music comes from the late 1950s or 1960s.  The oldest music represented here is Gone With the Wind whose requisite “Tara” theme must appear.  The album is bookended by music from two classic Western scores, Jerome Moross’ The Big Country and Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven (in an arrangement by Paul Bateman).  The former makes for a fine opening, though the Warner Brothers fanfare in the following familiar Casablanca suite might have worked better.  The performance of the suite is filled with sliding strings and a bit too much bass, but manages to work just fine once the suite settles in to its more pop music big tune “As Time Goes By”.  Personally, it always is fascinating that any of Steiner’s music shows up at all as the orchestra could have simply played a banal arrangement.  But it is a reminder at the effectiveness of borrowed tunes and Steiner’s reworking of them that still makes Casablanca a classic score and film. 

The suite from Korngold’s The Sea Hawk is a welcome departure from more Robin Hood music, though one does wish for a bit more Korngold.  The big romantic cinema concertos from Rozsa’s Spellbound score (which sounds like there is a theremin being used and Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto” from Dangerous Moonlight (Suicide Squadron) are well performed with great rubato by the orchestra and Roderick Elms.  The familiar “Love Theme” and “Parade of the Charioteers” from Ben-Hur also make their requisite appearances here.  The “Love Theme” features a rather gorgeous violin solo and quite moving performance.  Rozsa’s parade work must not be difficult as it seems to receive fine performances on disc a lot and this one is just as good as many others with fine brass playing. 

The odder choices, though no less well-performed, are the main theme from The Guns of Navarone.  Its appearance after Herrmann’s suite from Psycho allows for an interesting comparison of styles.  While having some Herrmann on the release, neither selection is arguably “Golden Age” material—especially his music for Taxi Driver which appears as a lengthy seven-minute track here.  The work is an intriguing choice and some of the swells are really well done.  Phil Todd’s saxophone solos sometimes feel a bit too harsh at times missing some of the noir-ish flavor of the original.  The selection itself just sort of ends rather oddly as well making the following Korngold selection a bit jarring.  The interpretation and music simply are out of place in the context of the rest of the music on the disc which hurts it more than is perhaps fair.

The recording features fine performances of all this music in richer acoustics that sometimes make climaxes a bit compressed.  Some purists may also take issue with the flexible tempos but again the intent here is to present these works as concert pieces more than to remain terribly faithful to original film tempi.  The dynamic range is most pronounced in the selections from Psycho.  Serebrier proves to have some feel for these works and shapes the music perhaps more than some might like in the more romantic-tinged selections.  Apart from the quibble with many of the actual selections not being really Golden Age music, one can still enjoy this lengthy concert of great film music played by one of Great Britain’s premiere orchestras.

Herrmann: Moby Dick; Sinfonietta
Richard Edgar-Wilson, tenor; David Wilson-Johnson, baritone; Danish National Choir,
Danish National Symphony Orchestra/Michael Schonwandt
Chandos 5095
Total Time:  63:24
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

The Bernard Herrmann centenary has not unleashed the sort of recorded testament that one might expect.  The 1990s saw a bit of a resurgence of interest in the composer’s film music and there have been some resurrections this year of his one opera, Wuthering Heights.  This new Chandos disc gives a window into two important early works from the mid-1930s before Herrmann’s work on radio and film began to take up his composing time.

In the 1930s there is a working out of the modernist and post-romantic styles in many works.  Most will understand this in terms of some of Copland’s pre-Americana pieces, the latter which begin to appear as the decade ends. There is another thread though of composers revisiting Baroque forms eschewing the symphony as a viable avenue.  The more modernists seemed to latch onto this well creating an alternative tonal language to the ultra-romantic and Impressionist styles.

Moby Dick is perhaps the last thing some might choose to encapsulate into a musical form.  Herrmann had initially considered using Melville’s novel as the basis for an opera.  But that was abandoned in favor of a “cantata” form.  The religious connection formally was an appropriate one as Melville’s novel might be understood as a sort of Revivalist religious retelling of American experience in life.  The music will be a revelation to those unfamiliar with the work which Sir John Barbirolli proclaimed as one of the most important works of the generation.  He premiered the piece with the New York Philharmonic in April 1940—with a young Benjamin Britten in the audience. 

The opening chorus, “And God Created Whales,” is like those big Shostakovich symphonic choral moments.  But throughout this and subsequent moments in the work one hears Herrmann’s style already cementing itself.  Deep dark orchestral colors are everywhere.  Brass swells and intriguing musical combinations are among some of those early stylistic aspects of the composer’s style which will become instantly recognizable in his later film work.  The woodwind writing also bears similar stylistic similarities.  These musical signatures are what make the work stand out in the midst of other language that is very much of the modernist-romantic style of the period.  The sense of drama in the writing is simply amazing throughout the piece and already one hears Herrmann’s near perfect sense of narrative underscoring and dramatic writing.  There are many times in this piece when one feels like Herrmann’s style somehow developed parallel to similar musical responses of Prokofiev or Shostakovich.  Compare it to say Alexander Nevsky and one will find many fascinating musical responses that have the integrity of each composer’s style with different end results.  This work certainly stands well against Prokofiev’s and deserves far more exposure.  Songs like “Oh! Jolly is the Gale” could have come from Shostakovich and yet still have Herrmann’s decidedly unique scoring style.  Somehow the music captures the thrust of Melville’s narrative with the emotional undercurrent ever present in the orchestration and dramatic support the texts receive.  At any rate, the piece as recorded here receives what may be one of its finest performances.

Like many composers, Herrmann experimented with other avant-garde styles.  His Sinfonietta, composed between 1935-36, is the seminal work in his output that exhibits this experiment.  The piece was revised in 1975 in preparation for a recording project that was never realized due to the composer’s death.  The present recording is a premiere of the original version of this piece.  Even here, Herrmann’s later style is part of this string work which some may find echoes of in his score for Psycho.  The five movement piece, ending in a set of variations, is a more astringent and harsher intellectual piece that falls into that style of music that one hears in Berg especially.  Herrmann’s sense of dramatic writing is still rather unique.  Something to note is the way he can take a single note and infuse it with an amazing amount of intensity.

What really makes this new Chandos release an important recorded document is that it comes at this music on its own terms.  There is no overemphasis to try and make this sound like Herrmann’s film music and the result is that we get at a purer performance of the text of this music with all of its wealth of hints of what was to come.  Not only an important release for Herrmann fans, but also an important release of American symphonic music from the 1930s.