LOVE STORY
Piano Themes From Cinema's Golden Age
VALENTINA LISITSA, Piano
BBC Concert Orchestra
Decca 478 9454 / ****1/2
Welcome
to the 1940s and 50s world of the silver screen when film music all sounded
like the piano concertos of Sergei Rachmaninov. That the composer defected from
Bolshevik Russia to live his last days in Beverley Hills seemed like the
ultimate irony.
Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto, written for the 1941
British war movie Dangerous Moonlight, was the most famous example of
movie music bringing together barnstorming pianism, dramatic gestures and lush
Romantic orchestration. The earliest work in this genre however comes from
1940, in the little-known Portrait Of Isla from The Case Of The
Frightened Lady by Jack Beaver which is every bit as sentimental.
Even
Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich got into the act with his Assault On
Beautiful Gorky from The Unforgettable Year 1919 (1951), which was
his characteristic cinematic style but without the stock-in-trade grotesque
jokes. Included also are Hubert Bath's Cornish Rhapsody (Love Story),
Charles Williams' The Dream Of Olwen (While I Live) and Nino
Rota's The Legend Of The Glass Mountain, which all sound more familiar
than their titles suggest.
The outliers are scores by Richard Rodney Bennett,
Carl Davis and Dave Grusin, with contributions from the 1970s and 80s.
Ukrainian-American pianist Valentina Lisitsa is in her element, bringing
touches of glamour, romance and not to mention, virtuosity, to this unabashedly
enjoyable album.
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