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An Interview with Franz Waxman

Lawrence Morton

Music from the Films: A CBC Broadcast

Publication: Film Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter 1950), pp. 132-137

Publisher:University of California Press Journals

Copyright © 1950, by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

This is one of a series of fifteen programs featuring interviews with prominent film composers, interviews written by Lawrence Morton and recorded in Hollywood for rebroadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The series is referred to by Gerald Pratley in his article Furthering Motion Picture Appreciation by Radio, which appears elsewhere in this issue. This script, broadcast in April, 1950, has been selected by the editors as representative of the series. - Editors.


ANNOUNCER: This is Music from the Films - a program prepared for all who are interested in film music and the composers who create it - arranged by Gerald Pratley and presented by Max Ferguson.


THEME REC: People in Love. (1) Play for 30 seconds and fade under announcer.


ANNOUNCER: Good evening. Tonight, Lawrence Morton, film music critic and writer, discusses the composition of film music with Franz Waxman. This is the fourth of Mr. Morton's series of thirteen interviews with Hollywood composers. Franz Waxman is one of the most prolific composers in Hollywood today. Not only has he scored over sixty motion pictures since his arrival in the cinema capital, but he has also achieved fame and recognition for his achievements in other forms of composition, and as a conductor. His suite from the score of Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca has been presented by symphony orchestras throughout the country. Waxman was born in Germany in 1906. (2) He studied piano as a youth in Dresden and later went to Berlin to study composition, harmony, and counterpoint. His work in Germany received early recognition with the result that he was asked to score many important films for the well-known UFA Motion Picture Company. The year 1933 found him Paris, where he immediately went to work scoring the Charles Boyer version of Liliom. When producer Erich Pommer, who had known Waxman's work both at UFA and in Paris, went to Hollywood in 1934, he took Waxman to Twentieth Century-Fox (3) with him. Waxman remained at Twentieth for only a few months, leaving that studio for more favorable assignment as head of music for Universal Pictures. In 1935 he signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he wrote the scores for such well-remembered productions as Captains Courageous, Fury, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Three Comrades. In 1942 he accepted a contract with Warner Brothers which he recently terminated in order to free-lance. While at Warners, he scored Humoresque, Mr. Skeffington, Old Acquaintance, and Possessed, among others. He has written the music for three of Alfred Hitchcock's films: Rebecca, Suspicion, and The Paradine Case. His score for the last-named film will be played later on the program. His most recent music is that which he wrote for Paramount's Sunset Boulevard, made by William Wilder and Charles Brackett, a picture which brings back to the screen those two great artists of silent movies, Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim. With the coming of summer, Franz Waxman's name can often be found as conductor in the famous Hollywood Bowl. He is also the music director and conductor of the Los Angeles Music Festival, an annual series of symphonic concerts which takes place each May. Mr. Waxman mentions this now in the following interview which he recorded in Hollywood with Lawrence Morton.


RECORD: Franz Waxman interview with Lawrence Morton


Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. A few days ago, in preparation for this broadcast, I visited Mr. Waxman in his home high up in the Hollywood hills. It's a very handsome house, and it commands a magnificent view of the San Fernando Valley. The view is framed by a large bay window in Mr. Waxman's study, and I could have been quite happy to contemplate the scene for a long time. But this was what might be called a professional visit, not a sight-seeing tour. And besides, being a musician, I was truly most interested in the musical paraphernalia of a composer's workroom - the books and scores and phonograph records which seemed almost to crowd the furniture out of the room. It was apparent, Mr. Waxman, that your interests are by no means confined to film music.

Indeed not, Mr. Morton. Composing for films is, of course, the main part of my work. This is how I make my living. But a composer has to keep up with the times just as much as a doctor or a businessman. And I try as much as possible to follow the activities of the important composers and writers of our time. And I'm also interested in the discoveries of the musicologists, particularly the new editions of old composers like Haydn and Vivaldi and Bach.


I presume that this is important to your work as a conductor, too.

Of course. I've been giving more and more time to conducting in the last few years. I've just finished my fourth season as musical director of the Los Angeles Music Festival, a series that takes place every spring. In past seasons I've conducted such important works as the Prokofiev Fifth Symphony, Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake, Strauss's Metamorphosis, and Stravinsky's Story of a Soldier. This year we presented the Mahler Ninth Symphony and Schubert's E-flat Mass. I'm leaving soon for Europe to conduct again in Paris--I gave a concert there a year ago. And then I'll conduct in Italy this summer.


Is there much difference between conducting for concert and conducting for films?

There isn't much difference from a musical point of view. But there are special problems in films: timing, balance for microphones, and so on.


But many of these problems are solved already in the composition of a film score, aren't they?

To a certain extent, yes. When I compose for the films, I try to imagine just what the sound will be in the theatre - not only the sound itself, but its relation to the dialogue and the action on the screen. That is why I often think of the tone color of music before I actually know what the notes are going to be. When I first see a picture in the projection room, certain scenes seem to call for a specific tone color--three trombones, for instance, or a flute or an English horn. In Objective: Burma I underlined General Stillwell's angry words ("I say we took a hell of a beating") with a solo trombone. And perhaps you remember the high string music in the main title of God Is My Co-Pilot, with which I tried to convey the religious feeling that was the underlying motif.


But tone color still leaves the problem of the overall character of the music.

Sometimes this is quite obvious. Just reading a script might give all the necessary clues. In a film like Objective: Burma, you can tell immediately that the music will have to be military, epic; some orientalism might be required by the Burmese locale; there will have to be music for the cruel enemy, and for a lot of violent action. You might say that, on the whole, the music is extrovert. But in a psychological drama like Possessed, a Joan Crawford picture that I scored a few years ago, the problem is more subtle. There are no battles, fires, chases, and so on. There are very few external events to be illustrated. There are mostly states of mind, conditions of feeling. You might say that in Objective: Burma the composer has only to watch the characters, while in Possessed the composer has to get inside the characters.


That's an interesting differentiation, Mr. Waxman. Can you give an example of what you do when you write music for "inside a character"?

In Possessed there was a direct cue given by the picture itself. Let me describe the situation in the film: Joan Crawford plays the part of a young woman emotionally unbalanced, a real psychiatric case. Her condition has, of course, a complicated history, but for our purposes here it is perhaps sufficient to say that it is based on an unreciprocated love for an engineer, played by Van Heflin. A number of times during the picture, Van Heflin plays the piano - plays a passage from Schumann's Carnaval. Frequently, in the underscoring, I used this piece as an expression of Miss Crawford's attachment to Heflin. Now at the point in the film where she realizes that he really doesn't love her, which is the point at which her mind and emotions begin to crack up, Heflin plays the Schumann piece again. Heflin is apparently playing the piece correctly, what the audience hears this time is a distorted version, omitting all the sharps and flats, which suggests what Miss Crawford is hearing. That is, the distortion of the music corresponds to the distortion of normal emotions. What formerly had been a beautiful piano piece now sounds ugly to Miss Crawford because the man who is playing it does not return her love. This illustrates what I mean by getting inside a character.


Isn't it almost a cliche in film music that mental disturbance should be illustrated by dissonances and strange sounds?

Yes, it's a common procedure. I don't know who started it, but there is plenty of precedent in concert music. Smetana, in his Quartet From My Life, used a high harmonic to illustrate the ringing in his ears that was one of the symptoms of his deafness. Religious mystics, like Joan of Arc and Bernadette, often claimed to hear voices and heavenly choirs. So there is some basis in reality for doing this sort of thing in music. I think composers have to take advantage of all these suggestive powers of music. It's one way of reaching audiences very directly.


When you speak of audiences, Mr. Waxman - and before, when you mentioned trying to hear in advance what your music would sound like in the theatre - you are really thinking of the function of music in films rather than purely musical qualities, aren't you?

Yes, I don't believe that music as function and music as art are necessarily opposed to each other. But it is true that film music operates in a set of circumstances quite different from the circumstances in which other music is heard. Film music is heard only once - not many times, as concert music is. The audience comes to the theater unprepared - it is not like going to a concert to hear familiar music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms. And besides, nobody goes to a movie theater to hear music.


If film music is heard in a special set of circumstances, just what qualities ought it to have?

It should have simplicity and directness. It must make its point immediately and strongly. The emotional impact must come all at once. It's not like concert music which is full of secrets that are learned from long acquaintance and many hearings.


What are the musical equivalents of "simplicity" and "directness"?

For me, music that is simple and direct is music that has strong melodic lines, simple accompaniments; and also a number of musical ideas expressed by solo instruments, even without accompaniments.


When you have a simple style, strong melodies, and solo instruments, you still don't have a score. You have only the materials out of which a score is made.

That is another problem - the problem of what to do with your materials. I regard a film score as essentially a set of variations. In concert music, variations are usually written around a single theme. But film music, where there are many themes, the variations turn out to be variations on a group of themes. Another difference is that in film music the variations are not motivated by purely musical considerations, as they are in concert music. The motivation comes from the screen action.


I've noticed in your own scores, Mr. Waxman, that you follow screen action very often by attaching musical themes to characters or ideas of the drama, and then varying the themes as the dramatic situations change. That is, you employ what is commonly known as leitmotif technique.

Yes, I find this very practical in writing film music. It is an aid in composition, and an aid to listening. Motifs are characteristically brief, with sharp profiles. They are easily recognizable. They permit repetition in varying forms and textures, and help musical continuity.


On the other hand, Mr. Waxman, the use of leitmotifs often results in rather complicated counterpoint-as it does in Wagner, for instance. Do you think this contributes to simplicity and directness?

There are many kinds of counterpoint, and each has varying degrees of complexity. I think this can be evaluated only by the final effect it makes. I have used the fugato, for instance, very frequently. Now I don't expect an audience to stop looking at the picture and say, "Ah, Waxman has written a fugato." But I think an audience will notice that somehow the music is growing in tension and excitement--because the reiteration of a single short motif, in a contrapuntal style, is a fairly obvious way of driving toward a climax. The technique of a fugato is strictly my own business. The dramatic effect is the audience's business. I don't think an audience will miss the dramatic intention if the composer has written a good fugato.


That seems to me to be a fair division of responsibility, Mr. Waxman. Perhaps we might say that the ideal situation will be reached when good composers write good music for intelligent audiences.

Don't forget one other factor, Mr. Morton - we composers feel that the situation, to be ideal, requires also good critics.


That is another matter altogether, Mr. Waxman. And before you make this an opportunity for reversing our positions, with you asking the questions, I think I should quickly say goodnight to our CBC audience, and then thank you for having come to the studio tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Morton. It's been a great pleasure.


ANNOUNCER: Franz Waxman's score from The Paradine Case has been arranged and recorded as a symphonic poem for piano and orchestra. It's described as a "recomposition" of the thematic material from the score presented in rhapsodic form for piano and orchestra. The main theme, which runs throughout the piece, is a rather haunting nocturne which pictures the sphinx-like beauty and strange attractiveness of the film's main character, Mrs. Paradine (played by Valli). This theme is heard in many variations and in different rhythmical patterns. Toward the end of the suite the introduction of the "Keane Theme" as a horn solo is heard. This plaintively portrays the emotion of Gay Keane (played by Ann Todd) when she realizes that her almost idyllic marriage is slowly being destroyed because her husband, Tony Keane (played by Gregory Peck), has become fascinated by the beauteous Mrs. Paradine. Near the end of this symphonic poem comes a short piano cadenza. This is joined by the woodwinds, which drive the cadenza to a final climax in a recapitulation of the theme. Franz Waxman's music from The Paradine Case then concludes with a short and brilliant coda.


RECORDS: The Paradine Case.


ANNOUNCER: Writing in Film Music Notes of January-February, 1950, Lawrence Morton said of Waxman's music: "In general, it has the grandiloquent expressiveness, the splendor and luxuriousness of texture that are characteristic of late German romantic music. If one had to ally him with any established 'school' of composition, it would perhaps be that of Richard Strauss. To this basic style he has added some of the elements of a more contemporary music-sharp dissonances, motor rhythms, angularity of phrase. He is fully aware of the new trends in music, for he is a thoroughly alert and trained musician; but they do not happen to correspond with his own feelings about the emotional content of music, nor with his convictions about structural principles. Nevertheless, he has such technique and facility that one feels he could easily absorb these later 'systems' if he wished to. Waxman's music may be summed up as being that of grand gesture and expansive emotion. His themes are strong, positive, clearly drawn, and calculated to communicate their ideas in their first statement. Considering these principles together with the variety and extent of Waxman's activities, they show him to be a musician of intense intellectual curiosity and boundless energy."

Good night.


Notes


  1. Recorded extract from the score for Woman Hater (Lambert Williamson).
  2. Original surname ‘Wachsmann’ born Königshütte, December 24, 1906. Franz Waxman died in Los Angeles February 24, 1967.
  3. Waxman was invited to work on Music in the Air at Fox Film Corporation in Hollywood. He sailed to New York City from Le Havre on the SS Ile De France May 16 1934. After arriving in California he was obliged to cross over the Mexican border and back into the U.S. in order to qualify to apply for U.S. citizenship.

Charles Gerhardt & Classic Film Scores

by Pascal Dupont • 10 May, 2024
Charles Allan Gerhardt English version adapted by Doug Raynes - FRENCH VERSION AND COLLECTION had a reputation as a great conductor, record producer and musical arranger. His major work at RCA on the Classic Film Scores series earned him recognition from film music devotees of Hollywood’s Golden Age, as well as other renowned conductors of his day. Born on February 6, 1927 in Detroit, Michigan, Charles Gerhardt developed a passion for music and percussion instruments from an early age. At the age of five, he took piano lessons, and by the age of nine, had established a solid reputation as an orchestrator and composer. He spent his early school years in Little Rock, Arkansas, then after 10 years, having completed his schooling, moved with his family to Illinois for his military duties, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a chaplain's aide in the Aleutian Islands, then became an active member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He went on to study at the University of Illinois, at the College of William and Mary, and later at the University of Southern California. Throughout his time at school Gerhardt was attracted not only to music, but also to the sciences. Passionate about the art of recording, he joined Westminster Records for five years, until the company ceased operations, and then joined Bell Sound. One day, he received a phone call from George Marek to meet with the heads of Reader's Digest, to discuss producing recordings for their mail-order record business; a contact that was to secure his musical future and a rich career spanning more than 30 years. Gerhardt's first job for Reader's Digest was to produce a record; “A Festival of Light Classical Music”; a 12 LP box set that he produced in full. One of Gerhardt's finest projects was the production of another 12 LP box set, “Les Trésores de la Grande Musique (Treasury of Great Music)”, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by some of the leading figures of the day: Charles Munch to Bizet and Tchaikovsky, Rudolf Kempe to Strauss and Respighi, Josef Krips to Mozart and Haydn, Antal Dorati to Strauss and Berlioz, Brahms 4th Symphony by Fritz Reiner and Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony by Sir John Barbirolli. In the 1950s he conducted works by Vladimir Horowitz, Wanda Landowska, Kirsten Flagstad and William Kapeli. In the early 1960s, Gerhardt lived in England, where he made most of his recordings, but kept a foothold in the United States, mainly in New York. Often, when he went to the United States after a period of recording sessions, he would stop off in Baltimore and spend some time listening to cassettes of his new recordings. Gerhardt loved percussion instruments, especially tam-tams. One of his favorite recordings was the Columbia mono disc of Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic. He had great admiration and respect for the many conductors he worked with, starting with Arturo Toscanini, with whom he worked for several years before the Maestro's death. It was Toscanini who suggested that Gerhardt become a conductor, which he did! His career as an orchestra director began when he had to replace a conductor who failed to show up for rehearsals. It was a position he would later occupy for various recording sessions and occasional concerts. His classical recordings include works by Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Ravel, Debussy, Walton and Howard Hanson. Hired by RCA Records, he transferred 78 rpm recordings of Enrico Caruso and other artists to 33 rpm. He took part in recordings by soprano singer Kirsten Flagstad and pianist Vladimir Horowitz. He worked with renowned conductors such as Fritz Reiner, Leopold Stokowski and Charles Munch, from whom he learned the tricks of the trade. Still at RCA, he assisted Arturo Toscanini, with whom he perfected his conducting skills. Then, in 1960, he produced recordings for RCA and Reader’s Digest in London, and joined forces with sound engineer Kenneth Wilkinson of Decca Records (RCA's European subsidiary), The two men got on very well and shared a passion for recording and sound quality, making an incredible number of recordings over a 30-year period. Also in 1960, RCA and Reader's Digest entrusted him with the production of a 12-disc LP box set entitled “ Lumière du Classique (A Festival of Light Classical Music) ”, sold exclusively by mail order. With a budget of $250,000, Gerhardt assumed total control of the project: repertoire, choice of orchestras and production. He recorded in London, Vienna and Paris, and hired such top names as Sir Adrian Boult, Massimo Freccia, Sir Alexander Gibson and René Leibowitz. The success of this project, in terms of both musical quality and sound, earned him recognition from his employers. Other projects of similar scope followed… A boxed set of Beethoven's symphonic works with René Leibowitz and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. A boxed set of Rachmaninoff's works for piano and orchestra with Earl Wild, Jascha Horenstein and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the above mentioned 12 LP disc set “Trésor de la Grande Musique (Treasury of Great Music)” with the Royal Philharmonic conducted by some of the greatest directors of the time: Fritz Reiner, Charles Munch, Rudolf Kempe, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Antal Dorati and Jascha Horenstein, with whom Gerhardt had sympathized. In January 1964 in London, Gerhardt joined forces with Sidney Sax, instrumentalist and conductor, to form a freelance orchestra. This successful group went on to join the National Philharmonic Orchestra of London, an impressive line-up that would later become Jerry Goldsmith's orchestra of choice. With Peter Munves, head of RCA's classical division, he conceived the idea of recording an album devoted exclusively to the film music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, one of his favorite composers. Enthusiastic about the project, Munves gave Gerhardt carte blanche, and was offered a helping hand by George Korngold, producer and son of the famous Viennese composer, who owned all the copies of his father's scores. The Adventure Began : The Sea Hawk: Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. For this first disc, Gerhardt selected 10 scores by Korngold, which he recorded in the Kingsway Hall Studio in London, renowned for its excellent acoustics. The disc thus benefits from optimal recording conditions, favoring at the same time the performances of the National Philharmonic (and its leader, Sidney Sax), a formidable orchestra made up of London's finest musicians and freelance soloists. Each album was recorded in the same studio, with Kenneth Wilkinson as sound engineer and George Korngold as consultant/producer. As soon as it was released, the album's success received strong acclaim in classical music circles and received a feature in Billboard No. 37, a first in this category in December 1972. It took no less than a year to sell the first 10,000 copies in all the specialist record suppliers and the album went on to sell over 38,000 copies, making it the fifth best-selling album in the “classical” category in 1973. On the strength of this success, Peter Munves and RCA entrusted Charles Gerhardt with the production of further discs devoted to other world-renowned composers of Hollywood music. The program includes several albums dedicated to Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold plus one each to Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Dimitri Tiomkin and Bernard Herrmann, followed by 3 volumes associated with specific film stars such as Bette Davis, Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart. Then, a disc devoted to Alfred Newman, a composer who was a pillar of the famous Hollywood sound, who Gerhardt admired and had met: “Newman was a charming man, full of good humor. He was friendly, fun and always had a joke. With his eternal black cigar in hand, he was a composer by trade, down-to-earth, discussed little about himself but was a first-rate advisor in my life. “ Gerhardt would consult certain composers in advance about how to recreate suites from their works, or when this wasn't possible, he would rearrange the suites himself and submit them to the composers for approval. "Some critics complained that my suites were too short, but my aim in the case of each album was to present a well-split 'portrait' of the composer, highlighting his many creative facets". Although Korngold, Newman and Steiner were no longer around to lend their support, Gerhardt was lucky enough to still work with Herrmann, Rózsa and Tiomkin as consultants who turned up at the recording studio to lend a hand. Gerhardt also had the idea of creating albums focusing on a single film star. Three specific volumes were devoted to music from the films of Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and Bette Davis. Although these albums suffer from too great a diversity of genres, they still offer the chance to hear and discover rare and previously unpublished compositions. The best conceived album was arguably the one devoted to Bette Davis. Conscious of the important role played by music in her films, the legendary actress took part in the conception of the album, knowing that it favored scores by Max Steiner designed for Warner Bros. The Collection Begins ! Gerhardt's passion for certain composers knows no bounds, but he soon envisages a disc devoted to Miklos Rozsa, including suites for “Spellbound” and “The Red House”, one of his favorite scores, which he will exhume to create one of the longest suites in the series. At the same time, he received various fan wish lists and films to watch, such as “The Four Feathers”, which he had never seen and which gave him the opportunity to discover a splendid score by Miklos Rozsa that he had never heard before. He was disappointed, however, not to be able to conceive a longer “Spellbound” sequel for rights reasons. Despite RCA's full approval, Gerhardt realized that it was not easy to record film music in its original form, as few were ever edited, played and made available for rental. For The Sea Hawks album, things were simpler, as Georges Korngold had copies of his father's scores, and Warner Bros had also archived material in good condition. From the outset, Gerhardt encountered other major problems in the search for and discovery of scores hidden away in other studios, often with the unpleasant surprise of discovering missing or incomplete conductors, or others heavily modified by orchestrators during recording sessions, or the surprise of discovering, in certain cases, instrumentation information noted in shorthand on the edges of the conductor score. For the disc dedicated to Max Steiner, for example, the conductor score for “King Kong” had disappeared from the RKO archives, having been shipped in 1950 to poorly maintained warehouses in Los Angeles where it had become totally degraded and illegible. With the help of Georges Korngold, Gerhardt was able to reconstruct a substantial suite from the piano models left by Steiner at the time. This experience was repeated when the conductor score for Dimitri Tiomkin's “The Thing” was discovered in the same warehouse, in an advanced state of disintegration. Fortunately for Gerhardt, Tiomkin, who was still alive, had been able to provide precise piano maquettes with orchestration information in shorthand, revealing a complex and highly innovative style of writing. Tiomkin always composed at the piano, inscribing very specific information and signs on the edges of the scores in pencil, an ingenious system of his own invention that was difficult to decipher. “Revisiting the score of ‘The Thing from Another World’ was a complex task, involving experimental passages and an unorthodox orchestra. You can understand that I had a huge job on my hands. When I approached the recording sessions, it was not without some trepidation. However, the composer present made no criticism or comment on my work, and was delighted. He was delighted.” For “Gone With The Wind”, Steiner was against the idea of remaking a complete soundtrack, as he felt that too many passages were repeated. It was an opportunity for him to revisit his own score, integrating his favorite melodies. This synthesis gave him the opportunity to revitalize his music by eliminating the least interesting parts of the score. Conceived as long suites or isolated themes, the discs reflect the essence of the composers' work. The “Classic Film Scores” series by Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann and Miklos Rozsa etc will become a big hit with collectors. For Gerhardt, this will be an opportunity to unearth forgotten or rare scores such as Herrmann's “The White Witch” and “On a Dangerous Ground”, Hugo Friedhofer's “The Sun Also Rises” and early recordings for Waxman's “Prince Valliant” and Rozsa's “The Red House”, all with new, impeccable acoustics. For “Elisabeth and Essex”, Erich Korngold had already prepared a suite in the form of an Overture, which was given its world premiere in a theater. The suite for “The Adventures of Robin Hood” also pre-existed. Franz Waxman created his own suite for “A Place in the Sun”, which was also performed in concert. Dimitri Tiomkin, Miklos Rozsa and Bernard Herrmann acted as consultants and contributed arrangements to their scores. For the continuation of “White Witch Doctor”, Bernard Herrman added percussion to link the different musical tableaux. He did the same for the different parts of “Citizen Kane”. Miklos Rozsa saw an opportunity to add a male choir to the suite from “The Jungle Book”, based on an idea by Charles Gerhardt. For the record dedicated to Errol Flynn, Gerhardt re-orchestrated the theme “The Lights of Paris” from Hugo Friedhofer's “The Sun also Rises”, as the original was no longer available. “I wanted to go back to that time and systematically explore the very substance of the great film scores of the late 30s and 40s, sending them back directly to their images as dramatic entities. The desire to rediscover tunes we know and to take into account the contexts in which they were originally used. I decided to recreate these scores with their original orchestrations, and this could only be done by returning to the ultimate sources, as the composers had originally conceived them.” Keen to open up the collection to other genres, such as science fiction, Gerhardt dedicated two further albums to the series in 1992. The first featured contemporary sequels to “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, promoting the work of John Williams, a leading composer of new film music. Then another called “The Spectacular World of Classic Film Scores”, presenting a disappointing compilation of scores that had already been recorded, except for the creation of a sequel to Dimitri Tiomkin's “The Thing From Another World” and Daniele Amfitheatrof's rarely heard theme “Dance of the Seven Voiles” from Salome. In 1978, the collection was published in Spain by RCA Cinema Treasures. In the USA and Europe, the Classic Film Scores LP series was reissued in the early 80s with a black art deco cover and colored star index. All Volumes in the First Series Were Reissued : By the end of the '80s, the series was running out of steam, and Charles Gerhardt planned to relaunch his collection with albums dedicated to famous American actresses, a new volume for Max Steiner and the Western, a volume reconstructing the score of Waxman's “The Bride of Frankenstein”, followed by volumes devoted to Alex North, Hugo Friedhofer, Victor Young and Elmer Bernstein... But RCA would not support Gerhardt in these projects, preferring to release the collection on CD for the first time. In early 1990, RCA asked Gerhardt to supervise and co-produce the collection, which he saw as an opportunity to revisit some of the volumes, inserting tracks that had not appeared on the LPs or extending certain suites. The volume devoted to Franz Waxman, “Sunset Boulevard”, was the first to be released. The CD did not benefit from any particular promotion, but sold very well, as did the other CDs that followed... A collection marked by a new design in silver pantone. The CDs series was reissued in 2010, still under the RCA Red Seal label, but distributed by Sony Music Entertainment. RCA Victor's Classic Films Scores series represents a unique collection in the history of film music recordings. 14 recordings of rare quality, produced by Georges Korngold and Charles Gerhardt to become one of the revelations of the reissue phenomenon. Other Concepts... Later, Gerhardt spent most of his time in London, continuing to make recordings. After retiring from RCA in 1986, he returned to independent work for Readers Digest and other record labels, a position he held in production and musical supervision until 1997. Since 1991 he had lived in Redding, California. In later years, he did not appear professionally, refusing all public invitations because of his desire to remain discreet. In his entourage he was close to three cousins, Lenore L Engel and Elizabeth Anne Schuetze, both living in San Antonio, and cousin Steven W Gerhardt of St. Pete Beach, Florida. In late November 1998 Charles Gerhardt was diagnosed with brain cancer and died of complications following surgery on February 22, 1999. He was 72 years old. Thus ends this tribute to Charles Gerhardt and the most famous collection of film music records: The Classic Film Scores series.

Exodus

by Doug Raynes • 24 Jan, 2024
Following on from Tadlow’s epic recording of El Cid, the same team – Nic Raine conducting and James Fitzpatrick producing – have turned their attention to a completely different type of epic film for the definitive recording of Ernest Gold’s Academy Award winning score for Otto Preminger’s Exodus (1960). The score is something of a revelation because aside from the main theme, the music has received little attention through recordings. Additionally the sound quality of the original soundtrack LP was disappointing and much music was deleted or cut from the film.
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