CD REVIEW
– HOLLYWOOD SOUNDSTAGE
Sinfonia of London
John Wilson
Chandos
CHSA 5294 [TT 60:49]
'
For long-listening
John Wilson admirers, who a few
months ago were delighted by the
album of John Ireland's music
with the conductor's re-formed
– and award amassing –
Sinfonia of London (also
nominated for the Gramophone
magazine's 2022 Orchestra of the
Year), this will be equally, if
not even more, welcome.
It is the third
release from these forces this
year and celebrates the golden
age of Hollywood, thus having
something of a wow factor for
devotees of John's earlier Warner
Classics recordings.
There are eight
tracks, three of them – the
Herbert Stothart/Harold Arlen 'The
Wizard of Oz' (1939), Max
Steiner's Oscar winning 'Now,
Voyager' (1942), and the
premiere recording of Franz
Waxman's 'Rebecca'
(1940) – being Suites. The
opening overture is from 'The
Private Lives of Elizabeth and
Essex' (1939) by Erich
Wolfgang Korngold, a familiar
name to our readers.
David Raksin's
multi-recorded Theme from
'Laura' (1944), here in his
own concert version with the
trombone of Andy Wood, Frederick
Loewe's Transylvanian March
and Embassy Waltz, two
orchestral pieces from 'My
Fair Lady' (1956), are
followed by Johnny Mandel's Main
Title from 'The
Sandpiper' (1965): The
Shadow Of Your Smile
featuring that finest of trumpet
players Mike Lovatt, and one of
the over 200 scores Alfred Newman
wrote: his dramatic Street Scene
from 'How to Marry a
Millionaire' (1953).
It is interesting
to see the less familiar names of
some of the orchestrators:
Friedhofer, Roder, Bassman,
Cutter, Arnaud, Courage, Rabb and
Powell.
Fascinating to
learn from David Benedict's very
useful booklet notes that the
aforementioned Alfred Newman
created the still-used Newman
System that synchronises the
playing and recording of film
scores with the moving image.
Chandos provide
their customary superior sound
support from the recording venue
of the Church of S. Augustine in
Kilburn, London, in September
2021. The playing is led as on
the Ireland album – made a
little over a week earlier –
by John Mills.
A shame that, in
these days when value for money
plays such a role in buying
anything, the disc at barely over
an hour denies us another
possible 24 minutes of brilliant
music making.
© Peter
Burt 2022
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