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TICKETS
CALL
CarnegieCharge:
212-247-7800
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Program
notes for this concert
Essay
From
Scene to Shining Screen: A Short History of Film Music
Essay
Paul
Chihara went Hollywood (and Carnegie Hall, too)
Essays
David
Raksin Remembers his Colleagues
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Sunday, April
22, 2001
3pm, Carnegie Hall
 Hollywood
BERNARD HERRMANN:
Psycho Suite
DAVID
RAKSIN: The Bad and the Beautiful
IGOR
STRAVINSKY: Four Norwegain Moods
MIKLOS
ROZSA: Spellbound Concerto
DMITRI
TIOMKIN: The Thing
PAUL
CHIHARA: Clouds (from out of the past)
world
premiere, ACO commission
Tickets are
$46, $35 & $16. Call CarnegieCharge:
212-247-7800
The concert
is preceded by a discussion, free to ticket-holders, at 1:45pm.
American Composers Orchestra
brings "Hollywood" to Carnegie Hall
Sunday, April 22 at 3pm
Performances,
Screenings, and talks also planned at the American Museum of the
Moving Image and Joe's Pub
ACO's
Carnegie Hall season concludes on Sunday, April 22, 2001 at 3pm with
"Hollywood," a salute to that city of icons, and to some of
the foremost composers for film, including Bernard Herrmann, David
Raksin, Miklós Rózsa, Dmitri Tiomkin, Paul Chihara,
along with Hollywood resident Igor Stravinsky.
 "Hollywood"
features Psycho by Bernard Herrmann, one of Hollywood's most
distinguished composers, who wrote over forty scores for top
directors during his career. Born in New York in 1911, Herrmann began
his career there as a composer and conductor, forming a long
association with the CBS Symphony. His score for Orson Welles's radio
play, The War of the Worlds, brought him to Hollywood to score
Citizen Kane. From this first score to his last, for Taxi Driver, his
works for film (Fahrenheit 451, North by Northwest, Obsession) evoke
psychological nuance and dramatic tension. The music from Psycho
written for strings alone, mirrors the film's black and white image.
The program
pairs David Raksin, a prolific film composer, and Igor Stravinsky,
whose compositions for Hollywood films ultimately resulted in works
for the concert stage. Raksin's output includes music for 300
television shows and over 100 films. Raksin's featured work, The Bad
and the Beautiful, as well as his most recorded work, Laura, reflect
his origins in show music and jazz. After graduation from the
University of Pennsylvania, Raksin went to New York to work as a
singer, musician and arranger. His arrangement of I Got Rhythm
brought him to the attention of George Gershwin, and he worked
steadily at Harms/Chappell until moving to Hollywood to assist
Charlie Chaplin in scoring Modern Times. In addition to drawing from
the full musical spectrum for his film scoring, Raksin orchestrated
Stravinsky's Circus Polka for George Balanchine's choreography for
dancing elephants.
Stravinsky
immigrated to California in 1940, and like his fellow Californian,
Arnold Schoenberg, was interested in film. Both composers were
unsuccessful in the medium and probably temperamentally unsuited for
it. Stravinsky's Four Norwegian Moods was originally written for a
film about resistance to the Nazi invasion of Norway, a project that
was never completed. The work is based on a collection of Norwegian
folk music Stravinsky found in a secondhand bookstore in Los Angeles,
including three tunes arranged by Grieg.
Rózsa
and Tiomkin are among the most successful of the breed of film
composers who were born and educated abroad and drew upon European
folk idioms and symphonic forms in their music. Rózsa, born in
Budapest in 1907 and educated at the Leipzig Conservatory, lived in
Paris and London where he enjoyed a successful career writing music
for director Sir Alexander Korda. Rózsa moved to Hollywood in
1940, receiving three Academy Awards for his film scores including
one for the Hitchcock film Spellbound, which Rózsa later
reworked into a piano concerto, which ACO performs with pianist Scott Dunn.
Tiomkin's
score for the cult classic The Thing displayed his talent for
orchestration and earned him one of his 23 nominations and four
Academy awards, including two for High Noon for best score and best
song (one of many top-ten singles). Born in St. Petersburg, he
studied with Glazunov and earned degrees in law and music. A touring
concert pianist, he introduced the works of Gershwin to Europe and
moved to the U.S. in 1925. His early works were ballet scores for his
wife's choreography. He began working in film in 1933, often with
Frank Capra, and remained active in the movies until 1970.
Paul
Chihara is of the newer generation of Hollywood composers, whose work
in the concert hall has garnered equal acclaim to that on the silver
screen. Among Chihara's credits are such films as Prince of the City,
Crossing Delancey, and The Morning After, as well as the ABC-TV
series China Beach. He has been commissioned to write works for the
Cleveland String Quartet, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles
Philharmonic, and New Japan Philharmonic. Chihara is currently
Professor of Composition at UCLA, where he teaches film scoring,
serves as Music Supervisor at Buena Vista Studios, and is writing
music for the newly acclaimed A&E series, 100 Centre Street.
This
concert marks the conclusion of ACO's three-year "20th Century
Snapshots" Millennium survey. The concerts "bring together
significant ideas of the 20th Century, with new music that points the
way for the 21st," according to music director Dennis Russell
Davies. The performances in this series spanned a century in which
American music began to have worldwide impact, and during which
American composers developed new techniques and a unique,
identifiable, and powerful synthesis of cultures in their music.
"Hidden
Hollywood" & Screenings at the AMMI
 Leading
up to the April 22nd concert, the American Museum of the Moving
Image in Astoria, Queens will host several events focusing on the
film composer's art. This "Hollywood" celebration includes
three weekends of talks and screenings, with composers Philip Glass
on April 7 (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Kundun), film historian
Royal Brown on April 8 (Vertigo, Spellbound), composer Carter Burwell
and sound designer Skip Lievsay on April 15 (Barton Fink), Paul
Chihara on April 15, and David Raksin on April 21 (Laura & The
Bad and The Beautiful).
On April 14
at 2:00 pm, the American Museum of the Moving Image will host a
performance, featuring clarinetist Derek Bermel, and the ACO String
Quartet. Entitled Hidden Hollywood, the program will feature chamber
music by some of film's most noted composers. Included is David
Raksin's recent work, Swing Low, Sweet Clarinet, Miklós
Rózsa's String Quartet No. 1, Bernard Herrmann's Echoes, and
adapted from the second movement for his Concerto for Clarinet and
Orchestra, John Corigliano's Soliloquy. Each of the works on the
program represents important output by prominent Hollywood composers,
yet these works were not written for the screen.
David
Raksin: Hollywood Cabaret at Joe's Pub
Joe's Pub
at the Public Theater will host the ACO's final Composers Out Front
performance of the season on Thursday, April 19 at 8:30 pm. One of
Hollywood's grand old men, David Raksin, will give a Hollywood
Cabaret featuring his new work Swing Low, Sweet Clarinet for clarinet
and string quartet, combined with his reminiscences about the
Hollywood heydays. Guest artists include pianist Francis Thorne, who
will accompany Mr. Raksin in a rendition of his most famous tune, Laura.
Tickets & Information:
Tickets for
the April 22, 2001 concert at Carnegie Hall are $46, $35, and $16.
Tickets may be purchased through CarnegieCharge at 212-247-7800, by
visiting Carnegie Hall's website at www.carnegiehall.org, or at the
Carnegie Hall box office, 57th Street at 7th Ave. The concert is
preceded by a discussion with the composers, free to ticket-holders,
at 1:45pm.
The
screenings at American Museum of the Moving Image are free with
museum admission. Tickets to the April 14th performance are $12
(includes Museum admission), and are available the day of the
performance at the American Museum of the Moving Image.
Seating for
all events in the "Composers Out Front" series at Joe's Pub
is limited. Tickets are $20 and are available from TeleCharge at 212
239 6200 or www.telecharge.com. Tickets can also be purchased at The
Public Theater box office from 1pm - 7pm daily. Joe's Pub and The
Public Theater are located at 425 Lafayette Street, in lower Manhattan.
About ACO
Founded in
1977, the American Composers Orchestra is the world's only orchestra
dedicated exclusively to performing symphonic works by American
composers. Through its concerts at Carnegie Hall, recordings, radio
broadcasts, educational programs, Whitaker New Music Reading
sessions, and commissions, ACO identifies today's brightest emerging
composers, champions this country's prominent established composers
as well as those lesser-known, and increases international awareness
of the infinite varieties-stylistic, geographic, and ethnic-of
American orchestral music. Since its founding, the Orchestra has
programmed nearly 500 works by more than 400 American composers,
including over 100 world premieres and commissions, generating more
new American Symphonic works than any other orchestra. Recordings by
ACO are available on ARGO, CRI, ECM, Point, MusicMasters, Nonesuch,
Tzadik, and New World Records. Further information about ACO is
available by calling 212-977-8495 or on the Web at: www.americancomposers.org
Major
support of the American Composers Orchestra is from Alliance Capital
Management L.P., Americans for the Arts, Arthur M. Blank Foundation,
Mr. Thomas Buckner, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Robert
Sterling Clark Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, Citigroup
Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Eleanor Naylor Dana
Charitable Trust, Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Fan Fox &
Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Fidelity Foundation, Horace W.
Goldsmith Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, Christian Humann
Foundation, Jephson Educational Trust, Meet The Composer, Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation, J.P. Morgan & Co., New York Foundation for the
Arts, New York Times Co. Foundation, Virgil Thomson Foundation, and
the Helen F. Whitaker Fund. ACO programs are also made possible with
public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York
State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs. |
