Thor's recent thread prompted me to have another look at Schurmann's website. Yes, he's very much still active. More active than me, and I'm only 28.
For those of us who love Schurmann's film music (I like it more than his concert pieces), paragraph two in the link has some good news - an upcoming CD on Chandos, conducted by Rumon Prawn-Cocktail, of several Schurmann scores. The composer himself has arranged the selections.
I'd like to rabbit more, but it's lunchtime and I haven't washed the breakfast dishes yet. Perhaps I am more active than old Gerard after all.
Thor's recent thread prompted me to have another look at Schurmann's website. Yes, he's very much still active. More active than me, and I'm only 28.
For those of us who love Schurmann's film music (I like it more than his concert pieces), paragraph two in the link has some good news - an upcoming CD on Chandos, conducted by Rumon Prawn-Cocktail, of several Schurmann scores. The composer himself has arranged the selections.
I'd like to rabbit more, but it's lunchtime and I haven't washed the breakfast dishes yet. Perhaps I am more active than old Gerard after all.
I actually believed him, posted my surprise in this thread, and went back to look at his earliest stuff. In 2000, he was discussing Goldsmith's Lonely Are The Brave... aged nine. So I came back here and quickly deleted my post.
Glad you mentioned this, Graham. I'm listening to the new chamber music album now. Don't know his work very well (in fact, at first I found I was confusing him with Benjamin Frankel), but now I've got some new (and new-to-me) music to listen to and look forward to.
Glad you mentioned this, Graham. I'm listening to the new chamber music album now. Don't know his work very well (in fact, at first I found I was confusing him with Benjamin Frankel), but now I've got some new (and new-to-me) music to listen to and look forward to.
Schurmann would compose a replacement score for "The Lost Continent" (not the '51 Lippert film, but a '68 horror film from Hammer) after Frankel's score was rejected.
You shouldn't have changed that post, litefoot. I was indeed nine years old when I posted about LONELY ARE THE BRAVE. But enough of me - it gets a bit sickening, I know.
Yeah Sean, there is a kind of particular sound to many composers working in the UK and straddling film work and the concert hall. As filmusicnow says, Frankel was first commissioned to do Hammer's THE LOST CONTINENT, but it was Schurmann who ended up doing it. It may have been a rush job for him - it's almost contemporaneous with the half hour piece he wrote for his friend Francis Bacon (who then returned the favour with one of his sketches) and uses much of the same material. It's a great score, but it can be gruelling.
So I too sort of find myself bundling Schurmann in with people like Frankel and Clifton Parker, even if his real mentor was Alan Rawsthorne. But I think he's spikier than any of them, and maybe that's why I enjoy his work so much.
I hope some of THE TWO-HEADED SPY turns up on the new CD. That's got a wonderful Main Title.
Thanks for providing that link. I notice that the film page there was written by the late and much-missed former FSMer David Wishart. Also, glad to see that the Chandos film music series seems to be still ongoing.
Hopefully, being a Disney title, Intrada can release the original soundtrack at some point. I'd say it's a much more substantial and accomplished score than Johnny Tremaine.
There is an exceptional article in the Rawsthorne Society Journal #25 by Dimitri Kennaway on Eduard Gerbrand Schürmann (his birth name). It also tells us why Frankel didn't do the Lost Continent:
To my ear Schurmann is Alan Rawsthorne... and I love music and style of Rawsthorne very much. So I have and I'll get anything of Schurmann. He is a first class composer on its own and it is a pleasure to know he is still active at 95. Thanks for the info on the next recording.
