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Alfred NEWMAN (1900-1970) All About Eve – Suite (1950) [4:39] Beau Geste (reconstructed by William Stromberg)
(1939) [20:10]
(1 Prelude [1:52]; 2 The Early Years [3:32]; 3 Chasing
a Mouse [1:38]; 4 Blue Water Sapphire - Farewell [3:55];
5 March Out [0:54]; 6 Battle [3:16]; 7 A Viking’s Funeral
[3:46]; 8 Finale – End Cast [1:20]) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Restored and Reconstructed
by John Morgan) (1938) [38:47]
(1 Main Title and Foreword [1:47]; 2 The Gypsies [1:14];
3 The Festival [1:06]; 4 In the King’s Box [1:19]; 5
The Dance of Death [0:52]; 6 Grabage at Gringoire [0:40];
7 Esmeralda’s Dance [2:30]; 8 Thank You Mother of God
[4:58]; 9 Whipping [2:38]; 10 Esmeralda Walks up Steps
[4:11]; 11 A Woman Has Bewitched Me [3:29]; 12 Hallelujah
[0:58]; 13 Esmeralda in Bell Tower [2:43]; 14 Clopin
Calls Charge [4:04]; 15 Victory at Notre Dame [3:07];
16 Clopin on Ground – Hallelujah Reprise [2:30]; 17 End
Cast [0:47])
Moscow
Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/William Stromberg
rec: October 1996, Mosfilm Studio, Moscow NAXOS 8.570187 [63:43]
The
eldest of ten children, Alfred Newman was a musical prodigy,
starting piano lessons at the age of five, and studying composition
with Rubin Goldmark, who also taught Aaron Copland and George
Gershwin. By 1920 he was working as a Broadway conductor,
and, in 1930, he accompanied Irving Berlin to Hollywood.
There he took private lessons from Arnold Schoenberg and
wrote his first film score for Goldwyn’s adaptation of Elmer
Rice’s 1929 Pulitzer Prize winning play Street Scene in
1931. Seventeen years later Kurt Weill made an opera from
the same play.
Writing
in a late romantic idiom, but with a more American voice
than either Max Steiner or Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Newman
has never received the wider attention of so many of his
contemporaries. Writing in 1996, Fred Steiner lamented, “Some
of the films (he) scored then don’t have drawing power today. Wuthering
Heights (1939) may be OK, but whoever heard of Beloved
Enemy (1936)? It’s not like the popularity of The
Adventures of Robin Hood (Korngold) or Gone With the
Wind (Steiner).” Between 1930 and 1970 Newman wrote music
for over two hundred films and acted as musical director
for many more. He won nine Oscars and, between 1938 and 1957;
he was nominated in twenty consecutive years.
P C Wren’s Beau Geste is a desert drama concering
three brothers (played by Gary Cooper, Robert Preston and
Ray Milland) and
their undying devotion to each other and family. Newman’s
score is rumbustious, humourous and tender by turns. The
Prelude has a swagger before turning to orientalism, and
after some delicate work the March Out is a defiant cue for
the Foreign Legion. After the brilliantly scored Battle,
with the addition of a female chorus, death spreads through
the doomed Fort Zinderneuf in A Viking’s Funeral – the most
heart-felt music in the Suite. The Finale is reserved before
giving way to a quick reprise of the March for the End Cast.
In his biography of Charles Laughton (Charles Laughton: An Intimate
Biography,Doubleday
New York, 1976 and W H Allen, London, 1976),
Charles Higham wrote that The
Hunchback of Notre Dame was “… an
operetta without songs, accompanied by … Newman’s crashing
chords and celestial choirs, suggesting menace or exaltation.“ Fred
Steiner said, “It’s a truly remarkable score, especially
in regard to the character of the themes. The great thing
about the themes for the hunchback, Esmeralda, the young
soldier she falls for and the poet Gringoire is that they
all fit their personalities so well … it’s real music.” This
is a big, colourful, score; motifs come and go and are
developed throughout the film. There’s more orientalism
in Esmeralda’s Dance, and, very surprisingly, in Thank
You Mother of God, there’s a solo for flute which is uncannily
like the flute solo in the final movement of Gustav Holst’s Beni
Mora! Celestial choirs, strange, Bernard Herrmann-like
timbres from the low woodwinds, delicate string writing
and almost Parry-like choral odes abound in this score.
Please note that I make these comments not because the
music sounds like Holst, Herrmann or Parry but to give
some idea of the wide range of the music.
All
About Eve doesn’t
have a big score and this little suite is tantalizing:
a jaunty opening titles sequence, followed by various incarnations
of Eve’s theme from tender and innocent to its climactic
appearance reflecting envy, lust and the intoxicating allure
of the theatre limelight.
The
musical performances are assured and if the Moscow Symphony
Orchestra doesn’t quite have the verve of the RKO Studio
Orchestra they play the music for all it is worth; textures
are clear and the various sections acquit themselves well.
William Stromberg directs strong, forthright performances
with great attention to every detail of the scores.
One
thing the notes don’t tell us is exactly what restoration
and reconstruction work John Morgan and William Stromberg
had to do for these scores. This is odd as the booklet for
the original release (Marco Polo 8.223750 – 1997) contains
a note by John Morgan, and it is most interesting. He tells
us that the All About Eve Suite uses the original
orchestrations by Eddie Powell. Stromberg created the Beau
Geste suite from “Scantily annotated conductor books” and
Morgan himself consulted “… the surviving scores and the
piano/conductor short scores …” to prepare The Hunchback
of Notre Dame Suite, and orchestrated about half of the
music to “… bring it more in line with what is heard on the
film soundtrack … I was also able to restore many bars and
one entire cue dropped from the finished film.” Also missing
from the Naxos booklet are almost all the photographs and
Bill Whitaker’s excellent notes have been slightly truncated.
The original issue also had a better sleeve illustration.
Incidentally,
Newman was born in 1900 not 1901 as stated on the rear of
the CD and in the booklet.
Ultimately,
it is the music that matters and this is an excellent re-issue
of music by a much underrated composer. The sound is excellent
and seems to be slightly brighter than the original. A must
for all fans of film music in general and this composer in
particular.