Erik Levi enjoys this imaginative showcase of concert works by film composers
CHAMBER CHOICE
Franz Waxman’s Four Scenes from Childood delights
The Golden Age of Hollywood
Works by Korngold, Waxman, Herrmann, Rózsa et al
Patrick Savage (violin), Martin Cousin (piano)
Quartz QTZ2156 62:36 mins
The range of composing talent that gravitated to Hollywood during the 1930s and ’ 40s was truly exceptional. It included a number of musicians that were no less skilled at writing concert works as in creating effective scores for the burgeoning film industry. Yet at the time, achieving due recognition in both fields proved virtually impossible. Part of the reason for this must be linked to the snobbery of the American musical establishment which deemed that commercial success in film music meant that any other aspect of a composer’s output could never be taken seriously.
Listening to this warmly recorded and imaginatively devised recital makes you realise the utter stupidity of such entrenched views, for the intrinsic qualities of the music featured here are self-evident. A wonderfully affectionate and strongly characterised performance of Korngold’s Much Ado about Nothing Suite sets the ball rolling. It is followed by Bernard Herrmann’s luxuriously perfumed Pastoral and Franz Waxman’s delightful Four Scenes of Childhood – a cycle of four miniature pieces that encapsulates the daily activity of a young household in the most vivid manner.
Robert Russell Bennett scores a real winner with his upbeat and slightly jazzy Hexapoda. In stark contrast, Jerome Moross evokes the wide-open prairies of the American Mid-West in his Recitative and Aria. The final item, Miklós Rózsa’s Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song, provides ample opportunity for Savage and Cousin to revel in the music’s exuberant virtuosity. All in all, a hugely enjoyable release.
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
Beethoven
Violin Sonatas Nos 1, 6 & 8
Viktoria Mullova (violin), Alasdair Beatson (pianoforte)
Signum Classics SIGCD794 57:22 mins
Beethoven’s three violin sonatas Op. 30, composed in 1802 and dedicated to Tsar Alexander I, have as their centrepiece a grandiose work in the composer’s favourite dramatic key of C minor, but the smaller outer panels of the triptych – and especially the first of them – are less often he
