Steiner: King Kong (CD review)

The Complete 1933 Film Score. William Stromberg, Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Naxos 8.557799.

When some of us think of the original 1933 movie King Kong, we think of the gigantic gates that lead into the big ape's domain or the titanic struggle between the two giant dinosaurs or, heck, even Kong himself standing in chains on a Broadway stage. But I wonder how many of us remember the music, without which the whole affair would have been a mere shadow of itself.

Austrian-born composer Max Steiner (1888-1971) is generally credited with having invented film music. He always shrugged it off, saying it was an idea originated with Richard Wagner. Well, Wagner may have championed the idea of musical motifs, but in the early 1930's, film music was in its infancy. Sound had only just been added to movies a few years earlier, and filmmakers were anxious to find as much original music as they could. Steiner's score for Kong was among the first (often cited as THE first) full-length scores with musical cues to underline specific segments of the action.

Steiner would go on to write many more classic film scores for things like Gone With the Wind, Now Voyager, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Fountainhead, The Big Sleep, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The Searchers.  But it all started with Kong.

Marco Polo gave us Steiner's complete film score for the movie in their 1996 recording, with the music reconstructed and restored by John Morgan, at which time I duly noted it in my review. Now, movie buffs, monster-movie fans, and fanciers of film scores in general should be pleased that Naxos is offering the same recording at an even more affordable price on the parent label. If the higher price of the Marco Polo disc put you off before, this 2005 Naxos reissue gives you a second chance to buy it.

William Stromberg

In the accompanying booklet notes, John Morgan tells us that this recording "is not a recreation of the 1933 music tracks, but a musical performance of the complete score as Steiner's original sketches dictated. When we noted differences in the soundtrack as compared to the original sketches (whether added or subtracted bars, repeated phrases, or instrumentation additions or deletions), we first tried to determine why these changes were made." The results are more than welcome.

The reconstructed musical score is a little over 72 minutes long. Considering that the entire film is only about 103 minutes, this means we are getting practically every note Steiner composed for the picture. Not that all of the music is exceptional, but it is thoroughly entertaining, whether or not one remembers the specific cues in the film. And it's one of those film scores that gets better as it goes along, with "Hey, Look Out! It's Kong. Kong's Coming" and the "King Kong March" among the better items near the end. Steiner does a terrific job evoking atmosphere and even imitating real-life sounds with his orchestra. "The Sea at Night," for instance, and "Cryptic Shadows" create wonderfully flavorful moods, and "Aeroplanes" sounds for all the world like real airplanes. OK, some of it also gets a bit repetitious and maybe even redundant, but that's film music for you.

As far as I could tell, the sonics are the same on the Naxos reissue as they were on the older disc, not entirely transparent but natural. The whole affair sounds like a genuine orchestra playing, not a multi-megabuck hi-fi system. I was especially impressed by the miking distance, which was just close enough for moderate detail yet not distant enough to sound muffled. Depth perception is also good, along with left-to-right orchestral balance. The sonics also have a nice, ambient bloom to them, a quality that will delight those who attend live music regularly and will annoy those who expect absolute audio purity. However, I have to admit I enjoy the sound of this same orchestra, the Moscow Symphony, recorded a tad closer, as they are on the Marco Polo disc of music from Steiner's Treasure of the Sierra Madre, one of the best film recordings ever. And the overall sound level on King Kong is slightly lower than it is on later recordings from this same source, so crank it up and enjoy.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:

Steiner: Adventures of Don Juan (CD review)

Also, Arsenic and Old Lace. William Stromberg, Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Tribute Film Classics TFC-1009 (2-disc set).

Austrian Max Steiner (1888-1971) wasn’t always the great movie-score composer he became; it took him a while to become known as the “father of film music.” He worked on Broadway for years as a musical arranger, orchestrator, and conductor before coming to Hollywood in 1929 and registering his first big hit with King Kong (1933), which thanks to Steiner became one of the first films to use an extensive, original, scene-specific musical score. After that, Steiner went on to do practically every big picture Warner Bros. and MGM made in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties--movies like The Informer, Now Voyager, Jezebel, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Casablanca, The Searchers, and Gone with the Wind--finally winding down his career in the early Sixties.

In this 2-disc set Steiner wrote the main selection, Adventures of Don Juan, for Errol Flynn’s 1948 tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler. The album’s producers--Anna Bonn, John Morgan, and William Stromberg--have reassembled the complete score for the film and present it in thirty-three tracks in another meticulous release from Tribute Film Classics. They even provide a bonus trailer track. Movie fans, film-music fans, as well as classical music fans in general will all enjoy the results.

It had been a full decade since star Errol Flynn made “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” and by 1948 due to hard drinking and riotous living the actor’s health and career had fallen into decline. Still, thanks to a cheeky screenplay by George Oppenheimer and Harry Kurnitz from a story by Herbert Dalmas (with uncredited assistance from Robert Florey and William Faulkner of all people) and fairly lively direction by Vincent Sherman, the movie made a welcome throwback to Flynn’s earlier swaggering movie roles.

Appropriate to a film about the legendary Spanish nobleman famous for his uninhibited lifestyle and many seductions, Steiner wrote a score that takes full advantage of situation. The music is dashing, heroic, Romantic, exciting, sentimental, suspenseful, and serene by turns. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Steiner’s godfather was, literally, Richard Strauss, whose Ein Heldenleben, Till Eulenspiegel, Don Quixote, and, especially, Don Juan probably inspired the younger composer.

Co-producer John Morgan reconstructed and orchestrated a number of musical cues that hadn’t survived the sixty-odd years since Steiner first wrote them, so we welcome them. What’s more, the “London Processional” track sounds especially appealing, and audiophiles might want to single it out for demo purposes

When I first heard William Stromberg leading the Moscow Symphony Orchestra in movie music back in the days when they recorded for Marco Polo and Naxos, I was a little suspicious. How would a Russian orchestra do playing Hollywood movie scores? It didn’t take me long to realize they handled the music splendidly, and the conductor and orchestra have only gotten better with time. The Moscow forces play with a style and flair worthy of any Hollywood studio orchestra, but they add further polish, resonance, and richness to the equation.

In addition to Adventures of Don Juan, the set includes Steiner’s complete score for the 1944 Cary Grant black comedy Arsenic and Old Lace (eleven tracks). Here, almost all of the musicians’ prepared parts survived the years. Needless to say, the music is delightful. Then, too, we also get an additional alternate track, “Baseball a la Brooklyn,” a trailer track, and even a trailer for WB’s 1953 horror movie “The House of Wax.”

Recorded in 96kHZ/24-bit audio at Mosfilm Studio, Moscow, Russia, in 2010, the Tribute sound is every bit as good as you would hope for this music. It’s extremely clear, clean, and dynamic, with a strong, audiophile-quality impact. It’s a tad forward, true, but it adds to the midrange clarity. Stereo spread is wide, occasionally seeming to extend beyond the boundaries of the speakers. Miking is fairly close, so orchestral depth suffers a bit, but, again, it helps the overall transparency. Highs are particularly sparkling and sound wonderful. In the last analysis, while the audio is not quite the ultimate in realism, it is quite spectacular, the way we expect movies to sound.

A lavishly illustrated, seventy-page booklet of pictures, text, notes, synopses, biographies, and such caps off a terrific CD presentation. You can find Tribute Film Classic products available at most retail outlets, or you can find out more about them by going directly to their Web site:  http://www.tributefilmclassics.com/

To hear a brief excerpt from this set, click here:


JJP

Steiner: The Charge of the Light Brigade (CD review)

William Stromberg, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Tribute Film Classics TFC-1005 (2-disc set).

"Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."

It was Alfred, Lord Tennyson's unfortunate assignment as England's poet laureate to play down one of the worst blunders in military history, the British defeat at Balaklava in 1854, and glorify the event in the poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade." That he did so to such lasting applause is a testament to his ability as a wordsmith of prodigious spin. None of which had much to do with the 1936 motion picture of the same name, its having little to do with Tennyson and even less to do with history. But, oh, what a grand piece of filmmaking it was, and as a pure adventure yarn, it's still hard to beat.  Thank three people in particular for the movie's success: Star Errol Flynn, director Michael Curtiz, and composer Max Steiner.

Executive producer and music preparer Anna Bonn explains in a booklet note that she, restorer John Morgan, and conductor William Stromberg had to reconstruct over half the score for the film using materials from the Warner Bros. catalogues and from some of Steiner's own original sketches, now housed at the Brigham Young University Film Archive. The result for this recording is the entire musical score for the film. It's almost too much of a good thing: The movie itself lasts 115 minutes; the music on this recording lasts over 100 minutes, comprising thirty-six tracks and covering two discs. You want completeness? You got completeness.

People often regard Max Steiner (1888-1971) as the "father of film music," his coming to Hollywood in 1929 and registering his first big hit with King Kong (1933), which is among the very first films to use an extensive, original, scene-specific musical score. After that, Steiner went on to do practically every big picture the Warner Bros. studio made in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, finally winding down his career in the early Sixties. His score for The Charge of the Light Brigade is among his finest achievements.

The music varies from the heroic to the purely descriptive, some of it Romantic, most of it underlining the action of key scenes. It begins with reflections of "Rule, Britannia!" and later shades of Tchaikovsky and others. A lovely waltz before the protagonists go off to battle is particularly touching. And so on. Needless to say, the longest segment comes near the end, where we get to the actual charge and its echoes of the 1812 Overture.

Maestro William Stromberg and his Moscow Orchestra play with a kind of demonic fury at times. From their actions, I suppose we can deduce they had a great deal of enthusiasm for the project. They and the music develop to a fevered pitch when the score builds to its final, fateful charge, the rhythms becoming increasingly faster and more intense as the doomed cavalry ride into the "jaws of death." It's a thrilling ride, to say the least.

If there is any drawback to all of this, it's that the music comes in small chunks, so many bits and pieces, that without careful attention it can all appear to merge unceremoniously into a sort of background noise. Is all of the music, in its minute completeness, really necessary?  Well, is anything really necessary for any reason? The album is a labor of love by and for people who enjoy the movie and its music, as well as simply for fans of motion pictures and the way Hollywood used to score them in the old days.

The sound, which Tribute Film Classics recorded in Moscow in 2008, is appropriately spectacular, given the scope of the movie. It's room-filling sound, with a wide stereo spread, good inner definition, and strong transient response, if a tad one-dimensional in terms of stage depth. Bass and treble are well extended, too, with a few healthy low-end wallops and a slew of sparkling highs along the way.

The presentation wraps up with a gorgeously illustrated and thoroughly documented and annotated booklet insert. I can't remember a CD package with more meticulous attention to detail. Even the two CD's are beautifully silk screened with pictures from the movie. Heck, it makes a person want to own the set just as a work of visual art, as well as a work of musical art.

Readers can find out more about Tribute Film Classics at their Web site:  http://www.tributefilmclassics.com/

Readers can find out more about the 1936 movie The Charge of the Light Brigade from my full review of the film at DVDTOWN.com:  http://www.dvdtown.com/review/charge-of-the-light-brigade-the/dvd/4489

JJP

Steiner: Virginia City (CD review)

Also, The Beast with Five Fingers; The Lost Patrol. William Stromberg, Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Marco Polo 8.223870.

This is not a soundtrack album. Thank goodness. I remember coming out of a big, THX-equipped movie theater recently and finding that my ears were ringing from the overloud, over-bright sound. Later in the week I noticed a newspaper ad for the CD of a particular movie soundtrack, exclaiming that the digitally remastered sound was "just like in a theater!" No thank you. It wasn't that I couldn't have enjoyed the movie's sound if it weren't so loud or bright; I just didn't want it sounding like that in my living-room stereo system. The fact is, movie-theater sonics belong in a movie theater, where their glaring, aggressive noises do the most good, not in my music room.

By contrast, Max Steiner's film music on this Marco Polo CD, played by the Moscow Symphony, sounds like just what it is: movie music played by a real orchestra in a live setting. It's a relief to hear it after going to the movies as much as I do and listening to so much deafening soundtrack music.  End of rant.

Max Steiner (1888-1971), often regarded as the "father of film music," came to Hollywood in 1929 and registered his first big hit with King Kong (1933), which was among the very first films to use an extensive, original musical score specific to the movie. Then Steiner went on to do practically every big picture the Warner Bros. studio made in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, finally slowing down and finishing his career in the early Sixties.

If the opening bars of The Lost Patrol (1934) remind you of Casablanca (1942), you'd be right.  Steiner did the Bogart film just eight years later, and there's much the same flavor here. The music for The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), on the other hand, Peter Lorre's hand to be precise, is lurid and melodramatic; it was one of the only horror films Steiner ever scored. But the real gem is the Errol Flynn movie, Virginia City (1940), filled with melodies that might have made Aaron Copland envious.

The music for all three films, arranged, restored, and reconstructed by John Morgan, fits into suites of twenty or more minutes each, and they provide a good cross section of the scores Steiner produced for almost four decades in Hollywood.

Marco Polo's sound is quite natural, maybe a little distant and a little soft on detail but delivering good depth and imaging. The album makes an attractive deal for movie buffs as well as music lovers, and it provides a welcome antidote for listeners whose heads are throbbing from typical movie soundtracks.

JJP

Steiner: The Son of Kong (CD review)

Also, The Most Dangerous Game.  William T. Stromberg, Moscow Symphony Orchestra.  Naxos 8.570183.

For those of you who missed it the first time around on the full-price Marco Polo label, Naxos now offer these two classic Max Steiner film scores on a budget Naxos disc.

Lovers of old film scores may safely continue to cheer John Morgan's reconstruction of this music.  The disc offers works of a slightly lesser quality than, say, Steiner's King Kong,  but it is fascinating, nonetheless, and executed in superb sonics.

Why the combination of The Son of Kong and The Most Dangerous Game? Well, for one, both scores were written by Steiner during his early days at RKO. Overworked and tired, he would soon submit his resignation, only to go on to greater glory at MGM and Warner Bros. with projects like Gone With the Wind and Casablanca. For another thing, he wrote the scores back to back while RKO was using the same sets to film both pictures.

Of the two pieces of music, it's The Most Dangerous Game that stands out, being more original, less derivative, than The Son of Kong. Based on the famous Richard Connell short story, the 1932 film version of The Most Dangerous Game featured Joel McCrea and Fay Wray as castaways hunted down by the demented General Zaroff on a private island. (The female interest was added to the film and not found in Connell's original 1924 story.) The various segments of the score alternately and evocatively convey the story's lurid yet exciting plot, and, as always, William Stromberg and the Moscow Symphony do a fine job delivering the thrills the scores deserve.

The Naxos sound, recorded in 2000, is solid, clean, and bold, with just enough resonance to produce a realistic hall effect but not so much to obscure inner detail. Stage depth is somewhat limited, but width and range are excellent. Also, the disc comes with a nice set of notes, not as comprehensive as the thirty-seven-page booklet of essays that accompanied the Marco Polo release, but enough to tell you everything you might want to know about the music, the composer, and the films. The recording makes a handsome and inexpensive addition to one's library of film music.

JJP

Steiner: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (CD review)

William T. Stromberg, Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.  Naxos 8.570185.

Every day in every way, they're getting better and better.  The budget-priced Naxos label is reissuing many of Marco Polo's full-priced recordings, including many of film scores.  The Marco Polo discs were worth the money, and now the Naxos reissues make things even easier on the buyer.  For those of you, like me, who love old movies, the reconstructed scores have been godsends; but with the restoration of Max Steiner's music for the 1948 John Huston classic, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Naxos/Marco Polo have outdone themselves.  This may be the best movie music recorded in the past few decades, it's that good, and it's an album I have fallen in love with.

The film, of course, is an adaptation of B. Traven's novel of greedy gold prospectors in Old Mexico, starring Humphrey Bogart in his most startling role as the paranoid Fred C. Dobbs, with Walter Huston (the director's father) and Tim Holt as his partners.  The film won Academy Awards for Best Direction and Screenplay, and Walter Huston won for Best Supporting Actor.

Anyone familiar with the story, and that's probably everyone reading this review, knows the plot (although I have the feeling that people younger than twenty tend to think that any film predating themselves is an old-time movie not worthy of their consideration and that anything made in black-and-white is ancient history).  Listening to Steiner's score, restored by John Morgan, the man responsible for many other Naxos-Marco Polo efforts, one can picture every detail of the story line and hear it in some of the best sound ever heard in this music (from the seemingly unlikely source of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Chorus).  I delighted in every minute of it.  But I will not go on at length describing the "Windstorm" or   "Bandits, Outnumbered, Federales" or "The Ruins" or the marvelously evocative "Texas Memories."  I suggest you just listen for yourself.  With over an hour of music, the album also includes three bonus tracks--music for the theatrical trailer, an alternate Main Title, and an alternate Finale.

Trivia notes:  If Bogart's fedora in the movie looks familiar, think of Indiana Jones; it was Spielberg's inspiration.  And if you are tired of hearing Alfonso Bedoya's famous words misquoted time and again, here they are verbatim:  "Badges?  We ain't got no badges.  We don't need no badges.  I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!"

JJP