The celebrated writer-director,
Billy Wilder, had a distinguished track
record in the cinema. Amongst his best
remembered films are: Double Indemnity*,
The Lost Weekend*, Sunset
Boulevard, Sabrina, The
Seven Year Itch, The Spirit of
St Louis, Some Like it Hot
and The Apartment. (*scored
by Rózsa). Rózsa was hardly
a novice either, His scores included:
Knight Without Armour, The
Four Feathers, The Jungle Book,
The Thief of Baghdad, Spellbound,
Ben-Hur, Quo Vadis, King
of Kings and El Cid.
Wilder cannily encouraged
Miklós Rózsa to quote
from his own Violin Concerto in his
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
score. The concerto had been commissioned
some fifteen years before by Jascha
Heifetz. It will be recalled that Conan
Doyle’s famous sleuth often turned to
the violin for relaxation or to help
him solve a case.
The introductory notes
to this album relate that the stories
for The Private Life of Sherlock
Holmes were written by Billy Wilder;
they were not Conan Doyle originals.
The film was conceived as a three hour
epic: a collection of bizarre mysteries
for Holmes to solve culminating in an
espionage episode in which Victorian
British Intelligence endeavours to protect,
from the attentions of a German spy
ring, the development of a submarine
around Loch Ness in Scotland. Much of
the film, that was originally to have
starred Peter O’Toole as Holmes and
Peter Sellers as Watson instead of Robert
Stephens and Colin Blakely, was cut
due to the insensitivity and incompetence
of United Artists producers. It is to
be hoped that one day The American Film
Institute will restore and preserve
Wilder’s original cut. The film has
continued to grow in stature since a
1970 release that disappointed critics
and audiences alike.
This new recording
is of the complete score for the originally
planned three hour epic plus some additional
and alternative cues not used in the
film. The album’s conductor, Nic Raine,
worked on restoration and orchestration
where Rózsa’s original sketches
were not too clear. The result is a
triumph, nearly 80 minutes of music,
superbly attuned to Rózsa’s unique
musical idiom. There are liberal quotes
from the Violin Concerto throughout
notably from the slow movement’s lovely
romantic material for ‘Gabrielle’ with
whom Holmes falls in love only to discover
she is in fact an enemy spy. The opening
theme of the first movement is used
for Holmes’ cocaine addiction.
Apart from the concerto
quotations there is much else to admire
including the tongue-in-cheek oriental
wit of ‘The Curious Case of the Upside-Down
Room’ and the memorable strongly rhythmic
music based on traditional Scottish
folk music for the sequence in which
Holmes and Gabrielle cycle from one
Scottish castle to the next. Also notable
are the Elgarian march associated with
Queen Victoria and the British Intelligence
at the Diogenes Club, and the misterioso
motif for the Trappist monks.
Nic Raine, with a splendidly
on-form City of Prague Philharmonic
Orchestra, deliver an exciting, atmospheric
and colourful reading of this important
score. Soloist, Lucie Svehlová’s
honey-toned playing brings out all the
passion and yearning of the music for
Gabrielle.
Miklós Rózsa,
himself, recorded a memorable nine minute
suite of music, in 1977, from The
Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
It was the highlight track of Polydor
2383 440 that included excerpts from
many other Rózsa scores including
Julius Caesar, Lady Hamilton
and Lydia.* This short suite
included the love music for Gabrielle,
the urgent music for the cycle ride
between the ‘Castles of Scotland’, with
subtle changes of tempi and nuance.
There was also music from the Queen
Victoria episode unashamedly full of
Elgarian pomp - more so than on this
present CD. This was possibly due to
the enthusiasm of the arranger, the
late great Christopher Palmer. That
memorable Polydor was one of three Rózsa
film score LPs recorded by the RPO conducted
by composer. It is to be hoped that
some enterprising company will re-release
them on CD before long.
The present disc offers
a winning performance of a colourful,
exciting and atmospheric score. It is
one of Rózsa’s best, drawing
on music from his own beautiful Violin
Concerto.
Ian Lace
Lucie Svehlová (violin) 
