Zdeněk Liška

A portrait by Pavel Klusák

Originally published in Czech Music Quarterly 2 | 2018

Text reproduced by kind permission of Petr Bakla director of Czech Music Information Center

Zdeněk Liška : Revolution Behind the Silver Screen

There is probably nothing we could call underground film music, but there is certainly an innovative scene for film soundtracks. The composer Zdeněk Liška (1922–1983) was an innovator of revolutionary parameters, but he lived at a time when Czechoslovak film music was not published separately. Today, the world is gradually discovering his name outside the frame of cinematography, on releases by British label Finders Keepers or the Polish brand Bolt Records.

And there is certainly a lot to discover. Liška pioneered film music in Central Europe, he composed the music to the Oscar-winning THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (Obchod na korze, 1965), and also managed to convince film-maker and artist Jan Švankmajer that music can mix well with a surrealist imagination. He bound his life to cinematography and scored several hundred films – the crucial aspect, however, is quality, not quantity.

We are currently in a period of re-evaluation in regards to the 20th century. Forgotten stories re-emerge. Points of view change, and what was once marginal can meet what a later conception sees as valuable. For too long, film music was considered an “applied art” in Czechoslovakia, and the publishing politics of state-operated labels Supraphon and Panton (between 1948 and 1989) made no claims to it for neither documentary nor commercial purposes. The Soviet bloc states had centrally planned cinematography, freedom of speech was partial at best, and artists often had to cloud their opinions in metaphor.

Concurrently, however, there was a functional system of film production groups, and centralised production included not only high quality sound studios, but also the possibility of using Fisyo – the Film Symphony Orchestra. Artists walked a narrow path: they had to try and find ways of using these excellent resources in their works without expressing too much loyalty to the powers that be and their ideology. Film music, graphic design for books, translations from foreign languages or work for children: all these fields became the home of artists that would at other times have expressed themselves through original work.

The freest time for Czechoslovak cinema was the 1960s. Films by authors connected to the new wave (and others) have timeless value. Zdeněk Liška made his strongest works in the 60s and 70s. His story, however, begins in the 1940s. Liška finished the Prague Conservatory and in 1944, he started as a composer in the film studios in Zlín. This city was crucially determined by the Baťa shoe factory. In the first half of the 20th century, Tomáš Baťa took great care of the complex social status of his employees; their involvement in culture and sport and their abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. The city includes an entire district of Baťa-houses to accommodate the workers. The film studios produced advertisements: Liška cut his teeth on these and on animated films.

Here, he encountered his first important collaborators: puppet film maker Hermína Týrlová, and a Meliés-style magician who created dreams between animated and live action films – Karel Zeman. With Zeman, the young Liška soon entered the realm of experiments. When glass, the pride of Czech export, needed advertising, Zeman made an imaginative short film titled INSPIRATION (Inspirace, 1949). The sounds Liška is able to merge with the glass material show how far he was able to think through the process of glass-making – from liquid material to solid, and from there on to specific forms – here still in the traditional orchestral instrumentation, with only the addition of the realistic sound of water.

Private Man

It is difficult to identify the influences that were crucial for Liška. Over the course of his entire career, he gave only one interview that was published in print – his entire story is only being reconstructed after his death. Until this day, it includes not only his extensive oeuvre, but also a number of uncertain periods and a general lack of information.

What is certain is that Liška decided to make film music his exclusive occupation. “I only write under moving pictures,” he would say. In this, he differed from remarkable composers like Luboš Fišer, Svatopluk Havelka, Jan Novák, Jan Klusák, or Ilja Zeljenka, who also left their distinctive imprint on film music, but were more active as authors of concert music. Liška, it seems, did not miss this. By the end of the 1950s, he had acquired a reputation as a distinctive, fast-working composer who possessed both professionalism and a remarkable invention.

It is difficult to identify the influences that were crucial for Liška. Over the course of his entire career, he gave only one interview that was published in print – his entire story is only being reconstructed after his death. Until this day, it includes not only his extensive oeuvre, but also a number of uncertain periods and a general lack of information.

What is certain is that Liška decided to make film music his exclusive occupation. “I only write under moving pictures,” he would say. In this, he differed from remarkable composers like Luboš Fišer, Svatopluk Havelka, Jan Novák, Jan Klusák, or Ilja Zeljenka, who also left their distinctive imprint on film music, but were more active as authors of concert music. Liška, it seems, did not miss this. By the end of the 1950s, he had acquired a reputation as a distinctive, fast-working composer who possessed both professionalism and a remarkable invention.

The beginning of his artistic maturity is marked by his first feature-length collaboration with film-maker and animator Karel Zeman: THE INVENTION OF DOOM (Vynález zkázy, 1958). For this Jules Verne adaptation, Liška combined acoustic instruments and early electronics: the orchestra’s dramatic narration is complemented by ‘walkie-talkies’ made by early oscillators and the industrial rhythms of motorised valves. Just like Verne, then, Liška anachronistically combined technologies from different time periods. That was his strong point: he belonged to the era of symphony orchestras, but he greatly enjoyed experimenting. He also suggested edits to the director, increasing the pacing of the entire film.

It is of course extremely rare that a composer acts as a parallel dramaturg (editor?) for the film, but that was exactly the position Liška began assuming. He conceived of music as one of the dramaturgical methods film has at its disposal. For him, it was much more than an illustration or expression of atmosphere. THE INVENTION OF DOOM became the most successful Czechoslovak export film altogether. To this day, it retains cult status in Japan.

With features like the subtle drama AT THE TERMINUS (Tam na konečné, 1957) or THE WHITE DOVE (Holubice, 1960), lyrical impressions from the life of a sculptor, he became the most in-demand Czech film composer. Throughout the 1960s, he stuck to an almost unbelievable rhythm: he scored eight feature films a year, and a number of shorts on top. This decade also saw the creation of his most fantastic works.

A Man from the Twentieth Century

“You have to understand there are things robots aren’t fit for,” says the astronaut in the first large-scale Czech sci-fi. Liška knew no one could say what space sounded like. That is why he wed his experiments in electronic music to the cosmos. He was one of the pioneers of electronic music not only in Czech film, but in Central Europe. The opening credits to THE MAN FROM THE FIRST CENTURY (Muž z prvního století, 1961) list Zdeněk Liška under “electronic music”, but also Jaroslav Svoboda as the “author of the electronic instrument” – Svoboda prepared the composer’s technical setup. Liška’s search for sounds made use of oscillators and filters: he carefully selected the sounds he would use. Suddenly, sci-fi was an amply supported genre even in Czechoslovakia: during the cold war, both parties were openly competing in the space race.

For the satirical comedy THE MAN FROM THE FIRST CENTURY, Liška created distinctive sounds (rather than music), but he had larger expanses and more complex means at his disposal when scoring the existential sci-fi IKARIE XB-1 (1963; the remastered version was screened at the Cannes Festival in 2016). Several layers of pulsations and tones complete the scenes both inside the Ikarie space ship and in outer space. Liška evokes warning sirens; communication signals both strong and weak; the trembling of material; nervous responses to sudden impulses; and most of all, something uncertain and unknown.

There is even a dance party scene in the futuristic spaceship: the astronauts do not make contact while moving; the important thing is the repeated flowing rhythmic figure. The harmony is more impressionist, but generally, Liška quite precisely captured rhythm as the timeless axis of dance. He never used electronic sounds for melodies: they were used exclusively for their own world of rhythm, drones, and abstraction. IKARIE XB-1 is an adaptation of a novel by the Polish writer Stanisław Lem, which is why the music – arranged into a suite – was first published by the Polish public broadcaster’s label Bolt Records, as part of their Polak melduje z kosmosu compilation (2016).

Another significant chapter is Zdeněk Liška’s involvement with Jan Švankmajer. Švankmajer, born in 1934, studied puppetry, and his aesthetic was formed by the very influential Czechoslovak Surrealist Group, to which he remains loyal to this day. His films always critique a passive approach to life, throwing doubt on the ordinary, celebrating imagination, proposing a latent revolution, and declaring “animation as a magical act”. Together, they made ten short films that belong with the classics of non-conformist art of the late 20th century: the Kafkaesque THE FLAT (Byt, 1968), in which animated objects grind down their owner; JABERWOCKY (Žvahlav aneb šatičky slaměného Huberta, 1971), a tribute to Lewis Carroll; DON ŠAJN (1969), an hommage to old puppet shows; or LEONARDO’S DIARY (1972), a study in societal decay through the medium of archive footage. The music for LEONARDO’S DIARY is one of only few exceptions: it was published in Czechoslovakia as the Suite for Brass Quintet.

Jan Švankmajer gives us valuable insights into Liška’s life. “Mr. Liška had an editing table at home – that was exceptional. He took the film home and then examined and measured it at his table for so long he discovered rhythms I didn’t even know about. The fact that he made rhythm such a central component of his music was very convenient for me. I think he knew how to capture a rhythm other than the obvious one: he discovered in the material the rhythm of its soul.”

The depiction of the beginnings of the Holocaust THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (Obchod na korze, 1965) was the first Czechoslovak film to receive an Academy Award. Not even this brought the Czechoslovak labels to publish Liška’s music – Jewish and Slovak motifs in an original transformation. An LP was made in the United States – in Czechoslovakia, it was only a vinyl single (today a coveted collectors’ item).

Screenwriter and director František Vláčil was one of the most important figures of Czechoslovak cinematography. Liška worked with Vláčil for almost twenty years: they made nine features together. IN THE VALLEY OF THE BEES (Údolí včel, 1968) and the famous MARKÉTA LAZAROVÁ (1967), they made great creative use of the tension between pagan music, the first notes of Christianity and the sounds of the real world. Apart from a few stage projects, Liška wrote no music other than film music: all the more, then, he let cinematography inspire him to create the best music he could. His film scores included his response to modernist composers: we can hear this in the music to the pagan love scene in MARKÉTA LAZAROVÁ.

Interest from Abroad

This film, like a number of others, was published on DVD in Great Britain by Second Run, reminding the cultural world about the somewhat hidden heights of the Eastern European sixties. The English musician, producer, and Czechoslovak-new-wave-cinema enthusiast Andy Votel is instrumental in these developments. With Finders Keepers Records, he began publishing extraordinary old soundtracks: not a single one of them were re-editions, they were all published for the first time. He faced several obstacles: overcoming copyright hell and finding a quality source, as the original magnetic tapes were predominantly lost.

That was also the case of Zdeněk Liška’s films: only the music for THE CREMATOR (Spalovač mrtvol, 1968) and the imaginative fairy-tale MALÁ MOŘSKÁ víla (The Little Mermaid, 1976) was published in Czechoslovakia. Both of these films have a very attractive sound-world. For the most brutal scenes in THE CREMATOR, a horror with comedic elements, Liška intentionally composed music of illusive beauty; a waltz whirling as if one were entering a grand ball. The music for THE LITTLE MERMAID, on the other hand, takes its cues from the underwater world: acoustic effects, electronics, echoes. The discs published by Finders Keepers in 2011 and 2013 inaugurated a new wave of international interest in Liška.

But this wasn’t the first time someone abroad had discovered Liška. Identical twins Stephen and Timothy Quay have been fixtures on the world art and cinema scene since the 1980s. They discovered Zdeněk Liška and Jan Švankmajer’s oeuvre while preparing a film about Czech surrealism in Prague. There is something romantic about their discoveries of film music: “We always went to the cinema with a tape recorder,” they say. They are among Liška’s most fervent admirers: their private archives include the soundtracks to a number of films. They legally recycled Liška’s music and used it in films such as THE CABINET OF JAN SVANKMAJER (1984) or THE PHANTOM MUSEUM (2003). With the Quay brothers, Liška entered the context of international contemporary art; new generations and societies of audiences. At their group exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2012, for example.

Music from Inside Films

The new portraiture of Zdeněk Liška in the Czech Republic has gone as far as the documentary film MUSIC: ZDENĚK LIŠKA (2017), directed by the author of this text. It brings samples from dozens of feature films and valuable personal testimonies from a number of artists: Jan Švankmajer, Juraj Herz, the Quay brothers – but also Jára Tarnovski, for example, a contemporary electronic musician who remixes Liška’s music into mixtapes for internet radio stations.

If I may be allowed to append a personal remark, the making of the film included several highlights. One of these were my conversations with Jan Švankmajer and Juraj Herz, the latter of whom – author of the legendary new wave jewel THE CREMATOR – died in 2018. The documentary is thus the last record of the famous director before his death. They both remember Zdeněk Liška as a masterful artist, who in a friendly and helpful manner listened to the director’s conception, only to then bring an entirely unique and different result – a film score as his own analysis of the work.

The second highlight was mastering the sound track for VOLÁNÍ RODU, an adventure film made in 1977: Liška took this prehistoric tale and wed to it electronic sounds including bass pulsations and drones. And then there was the collaboration between myself and the main co-author of the film, Jan Daňhel – editor and member of the Czech surrealist group. It is thanks to him that this tribute to Zdeněk Liška, at times displaying an inclination towards experimental methods, could see the light of day.

Liška expected his music to sound from inside films: thanks to its unique characteristics, however, it has separated itself from the image, now often presented as an autonomous work.

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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.