This is another winner from the Naxos
stable’s Film Music Classics series
and proves once again that the composers
of film music deserve to be taken seriously,
especially when the likes of Rózsa
and Korngold are involved. It goes without
saying that much of the music presented
here is exciting and the films would
have been nothing without it – indeed
the music, written between 1935 and
1955, has lasted a lot longer than the
films have, proving the point.
First up is Rózsa’s score for
The King’s Thief. This is packed
with full-blooded, lavish themes with
sufficient suggestions of the King’s
Court of the 17th century
to be convincing. Rózsa had an
uncanny knack of producing perfect sounding
melodies to order and his fascinating
and rewarding autobiography describes
the processes and the incredible time
constraints the movie bosses placed
upon composers like him. The music here
is so quintessentially English that
it is difficult to take on board the
fact that it was penned by a Hungarian.
However, with almost ninety film scores
including Quo Vadis, Ivanhoe,
Ben-Hur, and El Cid, under
his belt, Rózsa was one of the
very best writers of music for film.
To get an idea of how rounded he was
as a composer, if you’ve not discovered
it yet, I urge anyone interested to
seek out his concert music, including
a piano concerto, string quartets, and
a wealth of other truly brilliant, inventive
and exciting works.
Victor Young, who wrote the music for
Scaramouche, a true "swashbuckler"
in every sense of the word, was not
known for his concert music as far as
I know but with such film scores as
Samson and Delilah, For whom
the bell tolls and Around the
World in Eighty Days, he proved
his worth to Hollywood. The music for
Scaramouche is both thrilling
and romantic by turns and shows he was
the perfect choice for this rollicking
tale of love, rivalry, mistaken identity
and other elements that contributed
to its huge success at the box office
in 1952.
Newly arrived in the USA in 1934 to
arrange and conduct the score of Mendelssohn’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream for
the Warner Bros. film, Korngold so impressed
the movie moguls that they asked him
to write an original score for the forthcoming
Captain Blood (1935), from the
novel by Rafael Sabatini (also the author
of ‘Scaramouche’). The idea intrigued
him and the rest, as they might say,
is film music history, as he succeeded
wonderfully and went on to score the
classic films The Adventures of Robin
Hood (1939) and The Sea Hawk
(1940), all three starring the now
top box-office name of Errol Flynn.
Flynn made his breakthrough with Captain
Blood and when you hear the music
it’s not hard to understand why – the
pairing of Flynn and Korngold was so
potent. Indeed Korngold was, like Rózsa,
a concert music specialist who wrote
many wonderful works, several of them
embodying that flamboyant means of expression
so often required in film scores. A
detractor once quipped that he was "more
corn than gold" and whether that
was sour grapes or not is debatable
whilst his unerring ability to write
music of real worth is without question.
With more than fifteen versions of The
Three Musketeers made in Europe
and the USA, it remains the most filmed
of all the classic novels but often
it is the musical score alone that stands
the test of time. That is certainly
true of the version made in Hollywood
in 1935 by RKO, for which Max Steiner
wrote the music. He was no newcomer
to film scores having already written
them for The Most Dangerous Game
(1932), King Kong (1933) and
The Informer (1935), for which
he won an Oscar. It is doubtful if anyone
could surpass Steiner’s brilliantly
evocative score for The Three Musketeers
which embodies all the key elements
essential to ensure swashbuckling films
are successful. To quote Tony Thomas
from his liner notes there are "…
throbbing love themes for heroines viewed
from afar, orchestral fireworks for
any amount of duelling and swordplay,
proper pomp and circumstance to accompany
persons of rank and privilege and, finally,
a measure of humor to add humility to
the swashbuckling heroes themselves".
All the music on this disc could be
used as an object lesson in all the
above.
This Naxos series is a really valuable
contribution to preserving the music
from films that will not all stand the
test of time and, in many cases would
have sunk without trace but for the
music. I take my hat off to them for
the series and to the people who so
painstakingly managed to reconstruct
the scores. Plaudits also go to Richard
Kaufman and the Brandenburg Philharmonic
Orchestra, Potsdam, a recently formed
ensemble that grew out of two other
orchestras, one of them the DEFA Orchestra
in Babelsburg, that over the years from
the pre-Nazi era to the unification
of Germany was responsible for the playing
of the scores of so many classic films.
An ensemble that has this genre of music
running clearly in its collective blood.
A valuable issue altogether.
Steve Arloff
Brandenburg Philharmonic Orchestra/Richard
Kaufman 
