Film Composers in the Concert Hall, Part 2

Like Korngold, Miklos Rozsa was a well-established composer before he ever wrote a note of film music. Unlike Korngold, he continued to write orchestral and chamber music while employed by the studios, often during vacations to Italy.

The first piece to bring Rozsa widespread recognition was Theme, Variations and Finale, a set of orchestral variations on an original (but folk song-like) theme. The work displays a firm grasp of orchestral color and an ability to make the most out of a minimum of musical material - qualities that would serve the composer well in Hollywood. Although the piece was played throughout Europe by a number of well-known conductors, the most famous performance took place on November 14, 1943, when a young assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic took over at the last minute for an ailing Bruno Walter. The conductor was Leonard Bernstein and the concert helped skyrocket him to fame. Theme, Variations and Finale was recorded by James Sedares and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra on their first Rozsa album (of many); the reading is fine but can't match the manic intensity of the historic Bernstein performance, now available on an archival CD. (You won't find it in record stores, but you can order it at www.leonardbernstein.com.)

Rozsa would later compose another set of variations, The Vintner's Daughter, this time based on an actual French folk song. Originally for piano, he soon orchestrated the work; at times this version recalls some of his more exotic film scores. A recording can be found on the second Sedares/NZSO album, coupled with a youthful symphony which lay unperformed for six decades. While not a masterpiece, it contains many exciting moments and is worth investigation.

The one Rozsa composition which stands above all others is his violin concerto. Written for Jascha Heifetz, who consulted with Rozsa for many months on modifications to the solo part before he premiered the work, it was composed during a six-week period in Rapallo Italy. All of Rozsa's music benefits from a high level of craftsmanship and musicianship but in this concerto the floodgates open and the melodic and musical invention pour forth; there does not seem to be a single note out of place. Rozsa later wrote that "inspiration...was around every corner" in his Italian villa. (Billy Wilder was so taken with the piece that he wrote a screenplay based upon his impressions of the music; it became The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and he of course asked Rozsa to adapt the concerto for the film's score.) Perhaps because of Heifetz' stamp upon the work (and its difficulty) the concerto has not been performed as often as it deserves to be. The situation may be changing, though: a couple seasons ago the San Francisco Symphony programmed the work on a subscription concert and earlier this year Koch released a brand new recording featuring soloist Igor Gruppman. While the performance is a fine one, it can't help but be overshadowed by Heiftetz' definitive recording, available on a mid-price BMG CD coupled with the Korngold concerto and the Waxman Carmen Fantasy.

However, the Koch CD benefits both from modern sonics (which reveal details in Rozsa's orchestration) and from the other major work on the CD, the Concerto for Strings. Tightly constructed, and Rozsa's most important work next to the violin concerto, it is more akin to Bartok than anything else Rozsa wrote. (Avoid another, less satisfactory, Koch recording of the work featuring the Berlin Symphony.)

Rozsa's compositional output in his later years would be dominated by several more concertos, although none of them would be quite as successful as the violin concerto. A piano concerto, written in 1965 for Leonard Pennario, seems to start where the final movement of the violin concerto left off; the toccata-like outer movements feature a great deal of percussive piano writing while the slow movement offers some moments of almost Impressionistic reflection. Not long after this, the eminent cellist Janos Starker asked Rozsa to write him a concerto, which he did, taking a break between the second and third movements to score The Power. Like Heifetz, Starker offered his input, resulting in some wonderfully idiomatic writing for the solo instrument. Both the piano and cello concertos were recorded by their respective dedicatees, but are currently unavailable. However, the next Sedares/NZSO CD from Koch, due out early next year, will feature these two works.

The last major work from Rozsa's pen was the viola concerto, written for Pinchas Zukerman. Maria Newman recorded the piece for Varese Sarabande (coupled with some Lee Holdridge film music) but a more recent Koch recording, with violist Paul Silverthorne, makes a stronger case for the piece. The Koch CD also includes the Sinfonia Concertante for violin, cello, and orchestra, composed not long after the violin concerto and premiered by Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatagorsky.

Like the first article in this series devoted to Korngold concert works, this is not meant to be a definitive survey, but merely a starting place for those unfamiliar with Rozsa's works for the concert hall - there is a fair amount of chamber music which has not been mentioned at all. After the Heifetz album mentioned above (and in the Korngold survey), the Sedares/NZSO CDs are the logical place to begin exploring; they contain a number of shorter works not discussed here, but all should be of interest to anyone attracted to Rozsa's music.

Next up: Bernard Herrmann.