The Film Music - new recordings - suites from:-
Caesar and Cleopatra 1945
The Titfield Thunderbolt 1952
Dead of Night 1945
Passport to Pimlico 1949
The Innocents 1961
The Lavender Hill Mob 1951
Moulin Rouge 1952
Father Brown 1954
It Always Rains on Sunday 1947
Hue and Cry overture 1946.
Georges Auric was a member of the celebrated rebellious group of French composers
known as Les Six (the others were: Darius Milhaud, Francois Poulenc,
Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger and Germaine Tailleferre). Under the influence
of Jean Cocteau and Eric Satie, they achieved notoriety for their advanced
ideas. Honegger and Auric (and to a lesser extent, Ibert) were prolific writers
of screen music, mainly for the French cinema. [Jean Cocteau was famous not
only as playwright and librettist but also as a screenwriter and director,
with films like La Belle et la Bête and Orphée
to his credit.]
In a forty-year film career, Auric composed well over a hundred French film
scores and in the latter part of his career scored a succession of big-budget,
pan-European co-productions aimed, presumably at the American market. It
is, however, with his music for British films that this new Chandos album
is concerned.
Auric composed nearly thirty British scores. It has been rumoured that Walton,
Britten and Prokofiev all turned down the scoring of the 1945/46 Gabriel
Pascal production of Caesar and Cleopatra, starring Claude Rains and
Vivien Leigh, after Sir Arthur Bliss resigned form the project. The film
was a mess due to the wayward excesses of Pascal who was something of an
early Michael Cimino. Auric's music was one of its few saving graces. The
nine-minute suite, recorded here, begins with the Main Titles that evoke
the glittering waters of the Nile, the sultry atmosphere of Cleopatra's court
and her own sensuality plus the majesty and might of Ancient Rome. 'At the
Sphinx' is a fine impressionistic piece with very colourful orchestrations
including piano, celeste, xylophone, bells, harp, saxophone, tuba, chirping
woodwinds, and sultry strings all contributing to a hot house atmosphere
of heady seduction and intrigue. 'The Battle' is another colourful and exciting
extravaganza that, in places, is reminiscent of Respighi in his Roman trilogy
mode.
While Caesar and Cleopatra ground on in post-production, Auric was
contracted to score a very different film - the first great British horror
film - Dead of Night (1945). This was a portmanteau film that included
the story of the demented ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) and his devilish
dummy. Auric's roller-coaster ride of a score is suitably nighmarish and
spectral, but not without a wry sense of humour (ghostly horse-laughs and
ghoulish glissandos suggesting passing wraiths). There is also a poignant
edge to the music suggesting the ventrolioquist's plight and an appealing
sugary Ravelian waltz.
Perhaps Auric's best known British score is that for John Huston's 1952
production of Moulin rouge, the story of the disabled artist
Toulouse-Lautrec. Auric's music superbly captures all the brilliance and
decadence of the legendary restaurant-cum-cabaret, the 'Moulin rouge' with
its scandalous can-can dances - and polkas and quadrilles all heard in this
nine-minute suite. The film was famous for its waltz song, 'April again,
beside the river Seine,' sung endearingly here by Mary Carewe.
It is probably forgotten that Auric scored some of the best-remembered and
best-loved British comedies filmed in the famed Ealing Studios. Here they
are. The short suite from 'The Titfield Thunderbolt' (1953) is jolly
and high-spirited. Just as his colleague, Arthur Honegger, had perfectly
captured the essence of the huge locomotive Pacific 231, so Auric marvellously
portrays the lumbering and puffing old steam engine of the title. He also
brilliantly portrays the colourful characters who champion the threatened
railway against the threat of the unscrupulous bus company. The Lavender
Hill Mob (1951) is another high-spirited romp. It begins with an imposing,
pompous fanfare/march before the music lampoons itself and we are into quieter
music of plotting and stealth before the comic-caper robbery music. Auric
has a theme of glittering incandescence to portray the gold which is melted
down and cast as miniature Eiffel Towers for the French tourist market. The
hectic-paced 'The Eiffel Tower' cue music is a mercurial Gallic tour-de-force.
Gallic charm pervades the suite from Passport to Pimlico (1949) which
again begins self-importantly before Auric's irreverent high spirits take
over as the cheeky cockney inhabitants cock a snook at authority and declare
themselves the independent state of Burgundy. The score is suitably
French-flavoured with some subtle London song colourings. A delight this
score. Another merry bustling score came from Auric's pen for Hue and
Cry ((1946) which was another light-hearted romp of penny dreadfuls and
hordes of children chasing villains across war-scarred London.
In contrast to his comedy scores, Auric composed altogether darker material
for the 1961 production of The Innocents a subtle but harrowing horror
story, starring Deborah Kerr, and based on the Henry James story, The
Turn of the Screw. Auric takes the innocuous old English folksong 'O
Willow Waly' and gives it a chill disturbing twist. It is sung here,
unaccompanied, by soprano Anthea Kempston. The Main Titles music is equally
disturbing beginning with solo oboe and flute singing mournfully in a remote
key and other woodwinds joining in with brushed cymbals and eerie high strings
circulating around the sound stage to create an opaque and mysteriously
threatening atmosphere. More cheerful music underscores the coach ride but
the atmosphere chills as Bly House is reached.
Another darker score was penned by Auric for It Always Rains on Sunday
(1947). This 14-minute suite is the most extended selection on this album
and it is powerful material that should have been recorded long since. Auric
cleverly suggests the teeming rain, and not only a sense of tragedy and
foreboding, but also Cockney fun, in his Main Titles and Opening Scene music
with its stabbing staccato chords suggesting gunfire. There is poignant romantic
music for 'Tommy and Rosie' which suggests a hopeless passion. This cue and
'Farewell' have a Debussy-like intensity. 'The Getaway' music underscoring
the life-or-death chase of the escaped convict, John McCallum, through the
railway marshalling yards is exciting indeed. Younger film music composers
could learn a thing or two from this inventive chase music.
Finally there is another great and cheerful Auric score that should have
been recorded ages ago - that for the Ealing-like Father Brown (1954).
This film starred Alec Guiness as the mild provincial Catholic priest who
has phenomenal powers of detection. Very appositely the Father is pitted
against a French master criminal 'Flambeau' allowing Auric, once again, to
demonstrate his cross-channel versatility. Auric's colourful, busy score
combines an appealing Poulenc-like insouciance with more serene material
to suggest Father Brown's piety and 'The Cross of St Augustine.' The Channel
Crossing and the cheerfully evocative 'Train Journey to Fleurancy' music
are particularly appealing.
This is a very welcome addition to film music enthusiasts' collections. The
BBC Philharmonic play with great enthusiasm and conviction under their young
conductor Rumon Gamba. The sound is first class too, revealing this music
for the first time in all its vibrant colours. [British film music recording
techniques of the 1940s and 1950s left a lot to be desired too many scores
sounded muffled and thin.]
Highly recommended.
Reviewer
Ian Lace
and Rob Barnett adds
This disc takes us through one aspect of Auric's film music. He wrote only
30 scores for British films. There are 100 or so other continental scores
including Rififi (1954) and La Belle et la Bête (1946).
As one of the group of French composers known as 'Les Six' he has a reputation
as a joker and a bit of a flâneur. This disc shows that he has a wider
span of accomplishment.
The Cleopatra music is richly impressionistic and impassioned with
a hint of Irishry at least once - a tribute to G.B. Shaw perhaps? The
Titfield Thunderbolt score starts jokily but the middle section
(Triumph) has a few memories of Honegger's Pacific 231 and
indeed I am sure I caught a hint of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as well.
The title bars for Dead of Night are out of the same book as Mossolov's
Zavod. This is fearsome music of machines - wild and imposingly
tempestuous with perhaps a presence from the Valkyries. Passport to Pimlico
echoes with memories of rural France and one can speculate that this
brightness which I also associate with Canteloube's orchestral Auvergne
arrangements had its impact on the young Malcolm Arnold. Respighi's
Pines and Mossolov's music of machines meet in the exuberant finale.
The ethereal riches of Anthea Kempston's soprano chimes across the music
in The Innocents, catching the slightly boomy effect of a boy alto.
The nerviness of machine music is also there in the Coach Ride plus
the gracious dip and bow of Ben Frankel's Carriage and Pair. Both
machine rhythms and Respighian excess hit you between the eyes (ears?) in
The Lavender Hill Mob. To this is added an English pastoralism and
the rush and scramble of the chase scenes at the Eiffel Tower. The end-titles
have a baroque trumpetry grandeur.
Moulin Rouge's minatory storminess soon departs in favour of a sweet
tune. This melts into the Belle Epoque celebration and flouncy petticoats
which returns in the final Quadrille. Mary Carewe's Waltz Song is
sweetly sung and fortunately escapes the operatic style which would have
killed this song stone dead. Whoever was responsible for selecting Mary Carewe
should take a bow. This is touchingly done. An instant hit and must son catch
the attention of Classic FM as should all of the tracks on this collection.
Father Brown's music is dashing - catching the spirit of Dickensian
London (yes, I know the novelist is G.K. Chesterton). The Train Journey
(interesting that trains played a part in Auric's life rather like Goossens
and Moeran) and the finale are much affected by railway beats and machine
rhythms.
There is a substantial suite from It Always Rains On Sunday initially
rosily sentimental but this soon fades into a mechanistic nightmare like
a great steam engine with pistons out of control and the governor broken.
The overture (all the other films are represented by suites) from Hue
and Cry is a champagne gambol through the alleys of London. From the
music the locale could just as easily have been Paris. In this mood Satie
(Parade), Milhaud (Boeuf sur le Toit) and Ibert all jostle
each other.
I was not surprised to see that this collection had been restored by the
redoubtable and heroic Philip Lane who had the full cooperation of Mme
Michèle Auric.
This is a comprehensively enjoyable collection and will appeal, given half
a chance, well beyond the confines of the film score enthusiasts. Do please
get it. The collection has a generous playing time and recording quality
of the finest.
Reviewer
Rob Barnett
Rumon
Gamba conducts the BBC Philharmonic
