William PERRY (b. 1930)
Music for Great Films of the Silent Era - Vol. 2
Silent Film Heroines (Lilian Gish, Mary
Pickford, Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Vilma Bánky, Betty Bronson, Pearl
White and Janet Gaynor) – A Song-Suite for mezzo soprano and orchestra
[33.03]
Summer Nocturne for flute and orchestra
[12.02]
Brass from the Past: concerto for ophicleide and
orchestra [21.47]
Hearts of the World [12.04]
Wallis Giunta (soprano); John Brancy (baritone) ; Timothy Hutchins
(flute); Nick Byrne (ophicleide); Michael Chertock (piano) (all except
Summer Nocturne).
RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra/Paul Phillips
rec. National Concert Hall Dublin, 2014
world premiere recordings except Summer Nocturne
NAXOS 8.573105 [79.09]
This album is part two of a collection of music for silent films composed
by William Perry. Part one is available on Naxos 8.572567.
The programme begins with separate musical portraits of eight silent film
heroines as portrayed by the big female stars of the day in Perry’s
Silent Film Heroines: A Song-Suite. Wallis Giunta colours her voice
convincingly and enchantingly in portraying the on-screen heroines beginning
with Lilian Gish’s portrayal. This brims with the pathos of the young
heroine of Orphans of the Storm (1921) who is a young woman who
brings her blind sister into 18th century revolutionary Paris in
search of medical help. Mary Pickford’s Polyanna (1920) is a bright
and lively juvenile portrait. Greta Garbo’s and Vilma Bánk’s portraits are
glorious romantic melodies: Garbo for A Woman of Affairs (1928) who
is searching “for the right kind of man” and Bánky in The Night of
Love (1927) says “There is a love in the Gypsy soul, love that you
cannot control”. Comedy is king when Gloria Swanson as a chorus girl tries
to become posh to impress a man in Fine Manners (1926). Betty
Bronson’s heroine was Peter Pan (1924) and here her music is
boyishly heroic yet full of grace. Pearl White was a renowned actress who
was featured in many serials such as The Perils of Pauline (1914).
These always climaxed in cliff-hangers at the end of each episode. Finally
Janet Gaynor starred in Seventh Heaven (1927) a romance set in the
Paris of World War I. She believes her lover has been killed in action
nevertheless she waits in their little flat on the seventh floor just in
case he returns.
Perry’s Summer Nocturne for flute and orchestra was composed for
a 1923 King Vidor film entitled Three Wise Fools. The music
suggests a nightingale who observes children playing and lovers walking hand
in hand. He flies off as darkness descends. The music is sweetly evocative
of all the vignettes with a lovely melody for the romance. There is too a
hint of Delius.
Whoever remembers the ophicleide? It was a bass brass instrument that was
superseded by the tuba. It had a certain character that William Perry deemed
could be used in film music to suggest specific characters and moods. His
Brass from the Past is a concerto for the instrument and orchestra
cast in four movements: ‘Blue Ophicleide’ because it was occasionally used
in the dance bands of the early 1900s; ‘Military Ophicleide’ has a chain of
four different marches; ‘Pastoral Ophicleide’ is a lyrical elegy and ‘Latin
Ophicleide’ presents the instrument in rumba and beguine settings as Perry
reminds us that the instrument was once popular in Cuba and Brazil.
Finally Wallis Giunta is joined by baritone John Brancy in Perry’s music
for the D.W. Griffiths film Hearts of the World. In the space of a
little over twelve minutes this is a dramatically effective and affecting
tale of how the peace and serenity of a charming French village is blasted
by the ravages of World War I. As part of the composition, Perry set verses
by Charles Kingsley to evoke the happiness and terror experienced through
the years before, during and after the conflagration.
A worthy follow-up to the original collection of William Perry's music for ssilent films.
Ian Lace
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