The Film Music of Francis Chagrin (1905-1972)
Chandos Movies 10323
BBC Philharmonic
Rumon Gamba
Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester
29 & 30 June 2004
Premiere recordings (except track 1)
77:34 |
Mysterious Romanian-English composer
Francis Chagrin once described himself as "Romanian by birth, British by
nationality, and cosmopolitan by inclination." He might have added the adjective
"chameleonic" to his retinue, as that is what Chandos Movies' The Film Music of
Francis Chagrin is -- a collection of fascinating film scores and transcribed
soundtrack segments, none sounding much like one another. Even more so than his
Hungarian contemporary
Miklós Rozsa,
Chagrin was able to re-invent himself wholly in order to suit the
requirements of a given property, and to invest in it the dramatic content it
needed, an ability that carried him through more than 200 films and television
shows. These ranged from the popular Gainsborough Pictures anthology film Easy
Money to incidental music for some early episodes of the BBC's legendary science
fiction odyssey Doctor Who.
The sheer variety of moods, styles, and emotions that one encounters in the
course of The Film Music of Francis Chagrin is staggering. From the
confrontational, Russian Futurist-inspired wallop of
Chagrin's score for The Intruder to the sweet, Viennese confections evoked
in his music for Last Holiday, to the folk-like, Eastern European mannerisms of
his Yugoslavian Sketches for "The Bridge,"
Chagrin is a composer whose work leaves the listener totally unable to
recognize what is behind the next door to open. One wonders where
Chagrin could possibly have heard all of the music that he references, as he
only lived in four cities -- Bucharest, Zurich, Paris, and London. However, not
all of
Chagrin's inspiration derives from purely musical sources. Note, for example,
the clearly stated musical rendering of the Morse code signal "S.O.S" at the
start of his music for The Four Just Men.
Chagrin allegedly worked for the O.S.S. during World War II, encoding secret
messages into musical notation, and evoking familiar signals known to his
audience are hallmarks of
Chagrin's work. The amusing quodlibet that is The Hoffnung Symphony
Orchestra additionally demonstrates
Chagrin's uncanny skill in assembling disparate strands of pre-existing
melodic material.
The
BBC Philharmonic under
Rumon Gamba is in top form on The Film Music of Francis Chagrin, delivering
loving, fully attentive, and well-articulated performances of this music, some
probably better played here than on the original soundtracks. If one is inclined
toward film music, then one cannot afford to miss The Film Music of Francis
Chagrin. Upon revival, most obscure composers tend to illuminate various corners
of the repertoire without substantially changing what we know about musical
developments in a historic sense.
Chagrin belongs in his own class and is a major discovery in a field that
does not have many stones left to overturn. |
| 1 |
Overture from 'Helter Skelter' |
6:34 |
| 2 |
Portrait of Eva from 'An Inspector Calls' (arranged and orchestrated by Philip Lane) |
3:25 |
| From 'The Colditz Story' (arranged by Philip Lane) |
3:31 |
| 3 |
Prelude |
2:00 |
| 4 |
Finale |
1:31 |
| Suite from 'Greyfriars Bobby' (arranged by Philip Lane) |
11:42 |
| 5 |
Main Titles and Opening Scene |
3:50 |
| 6 |
Bobby escapes to Edinburgh |
5:22 |
| 7 |
Finale |
2:30 |
| From 'The Four Just Men' (edited by Philip Lane) |
3:05 |
| 8 |
Theme |
1:28 |
| 9 |
Main Titles |
1:37 |
| 10 |
'The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra' (arranged by Philip Lane) |
5:19 |
| Four Orchestral Episodes from 'The Intruder' (edited by Philip Lane) |
11:11 |
| 11 |
Preamble |
1:48 |
| 12 |
Conflagration |
3:21 |
| 13 |
Pursuit at night |
3:58 |
| 14 |
Vindication |
2:04 |
| 15 |
from 'Easy Money' - Il basso ostinato (edited by Philip Lane) |
6:40 |
| Suite from 'Last Holiday' (arranged by Philip Lane) |
14:19 |
| 16 |
Main Titles |
1:50 |
| 17 |
Romance |
3:51 |
| 18 |
Nocturne |
4:01 |
| 19 |
Samba |
1:44 |
| 20 |
Epilogue |
2:53 |
| Yugoslav Sketches from 'The Bridge' |
10:42 |
| 21 |
Village Feast |
3:07 |
| 22 |
Omlandina (Childhood) |
2:35 |
| 23 |
Dusk |
2:05 |
| 24 |
The New Bridge |
2:55 |
The twentieth century generously dealt British music a
winning hand when it came to composers and musicians, a veritable royal
flush of talent, and if Francis Chagrin (1905-1972) is one of numerous cards
almost lost in the present artistic shuffle he is nonetheless a classical
king, if not an ace. In this new millennium when perhaps we are even
tempted to sometimes play the joker it is almost a revelation to rediscover
the music of those like Francis Chagrin, Benjamin Frankel, Elizabeth Lutyens,
Gerard Schurmann, Doreen Carwithian and even Richard Rodney Bennett who have
unfairly been ushered under the shadow of current establishment favourites.
But luckily there are record companies and individual
recording producers who strive to maintain the heritage of all worthy
British music – who seek to establish fashion rather than just follow it -
and paramount among these has been Chandos Records. That they
have extended their boundaries beyond the concert hall to also encompass
composition for film via a sterling and continuing series of recordings has
enabled a truer definition of many a composer’s work to emerge. After
all, can we really consider the output of Malcolm Arnold or William Alwyn or
Alan Rawsthorne or even Arthur Bliss and Vaughan Williams without their film
music being part of the equation? Historically the trend in
Britain has been for composers with classical and concert hall credentials
to score mainstream films, a happy two-way musical highway which netted
vintage British films outstanding scores and the composers useful paycheques
and the opportunity to experiment. The work of
accomplished classical composers in film should surely be examined and
celebrated.
Of course when considering any retrospective of a
composer’s film commissions there is every likelihood that those who have
scored particularly prominent films will predominate – particularly galling
in that many once proud British films have become relegated to misty memory
or the ignominy of middle-of-the-night television. And as these
films fade into obscurity, so do their scores, no matter how admirable or
valuable. Time has perched Francis Chagrin on a cusp, with his
reputation for scoring films likely to tip towards the dark pit of anonymity
with titles like The Intruder, Helter Skelter and Easy Money,
but possibly saved from the chasm by the more readily identifiable An
Inspector Calls and The Colditz Story. But now that
reputation has been placed beyond doubt by this splendid new compendium
comprising outstanding selections from ten titles.
I wasn’t aware of the farcical 1949 film Helter
Skelter until I heard Chagrin’s witty and adroit Concert Overture
broadcast by the BBC Concert Orchestra back in 1972. The music had
“come home” so to speak, as the film had been set in and around the BBC,
with Carol Marsh, David Tomlinson, Jimmy Edwards and Terry Thomas
frantically keeping the froth flying. Thankfully An Inspector
Calls regularly features in the television schedules and is now handily
available on DVD. Alistair Sim perfectly embodied the mysterious
inspector in this squarely rigged but faithful adaptation of J B Priestley’s
old theatrical warhorse, but for the music on this disc we are treated to
the delightful theme for a subsidiary character, that of Eva Smith.
1958’s The Colditz Story probably owes its
continuing high profile to the later and very popular television series (scored
by Robert Farnon) also recounting how British servicemen never lapsed in
their ingenuity when planning escapes from the Nazi prisoner of war facility
at Colditz Castle. Chagrin’s main title music is possibly one of the
most raucous ever imagined for a film, its sledgehammer impact almost
sufficient in itself to shatter the formidable Colditz battlements.
Chagrin deploys bagpipes and a beguiling Gaelic lilt to leave us in no doubt
we are “north of the border” for The Greyfriars Bobby, made by Walt
Disney in 1961, and telling the tale of a loyal skye terrier who kept vigil
over his deceased owner’s Edinburgh grave for years. Much of the
scoring is delightfully flighty with emphasis on sympathetic strings and
kindly woodwind. The 1959 television series Four Just Men
proposed a crime-fighting quartet – Jack Hawkins, Richard Conte, Vittorio De
Sica and Dan Dailey - each based in a differing part of the world and each
in turn gaining the lion’s share of an episode in rotation.
Francis Chagrin employed some natty syncopation and a smart reference to the
Morse code SOS to lead us into the series each week.
The amusing concerts which Gerard Hoffnung devised in the
Fifties plus his inimitable musical cartoons inspired a Halas and Batchelor
animated film for BBC Television in 1965. In an inspired extravaganza
of re-orchestration, direct musical quotes and pastiche Chagrin has
inestimable fun with favoured works of Bizet, Liszt, Mozart, Rimsky-Korsakov
and Tchaikovsky et al. Who was it who dared to say that musical
jokes were unfunny! Jack Hawkins starred in The Intruder
produced in 1953, with the plot ignited when an ex-serviceman foiling a
burglary at his home discovers the culprit to be an old comrade in arms.
As with his music for Helter Skelter, Francis Chagrin compiled a concert
work from this score, comprising four startlingly stark episodes, from the
darkly reflective to the dramatically strident.
In pre-lottery days there was always the Football Pools
if you fancied a flutter, and in 1947 Easy Money related the sagas of
a number of fictional winners. The film was scored by Temple Abady,
but the final tale to be told featured an orchestral bass player who falls
out with his conductor and orchestra only to return with his cash winnings
as the ensemble’s saviour when it gets into financial straights.
Chagrin was called upon to compose the classically conservative but
musically astute Basso Ostinato as the concert piece heralding the bass
player’s triumphant return to the orchestral fold. Last
Holiday, filmed in 1950, lingers in the mind of many as a poignant story
about a man who imagines he has only weeks to live and yet falls in love –
Alec Guinness starred along with Beatrice Campbell and Kay Walsh.
Here Chagrin was called upon to embrace the potently dramatic, the
yearningly romantic (epitomised by a beautifully languid solo violin) plus
provide repertoire for Palm Court-type ensembles. Variety is not
only the spice of life, it’s a requisite if intending to score films!
I wonder if any of us recall The Bridge – a short documentary film
from 1946 recounting how Yugoslavia set to rebuilding its infrastructure and
social fabric following the ravages of the Second World War - but at least
it is now enshrined in music on this disc. The suite of four
pieces graphically celebrate a village feast, the simple joy of childhood,
the cool of an evening and the building of a new bridge.
Chagrin was a prolific composer not only for the concert
hall, but also for film and television, and at last we have this
considerable and representative retrospective of his extraordinary,
brilliant and diverse and music for those genres – although certain geeky
fans of a specific and enduring television series may ask “where is the
music he composed for that episode of Dr Who back in 1964?”!
Of course the interpretation of film scores by “classical”
record labels has often been an area of contention for movie music
aficionados, where the original musical intentions have been subverted by
the adoption of inappropriate tempi, swimming bath acoustics, and yawning
chasms of silence between cues (which are presumably considered “movements”
by the said labels and therefore deserving of splendid isolation!).
How fortunate then that Chandos have lighted on Rumon Gamba to conduct this
ever-expanding, long overdue and very welcome miscellany of classic film
music. Here is a conductor with seemingly an almost intrinsic feel for
the material, even given its route source, diversity and complexity.
Or it may be masses of dedicated “homework” which have resulted in Gamba’s
sure touch with this genre of music - which is still perplexing to some, an
affront to others, but to the observant and the informed one of the most
extraordinary new art forms to emerge from the twentieth century.
Mind you, there should be no “typecasting” of Gamba as a “film music
conductor” – but this is not likely given his wide range of international
concert performances. And tribute must also be paid to Philip Lane,
who has reconstructed by ear or edited and arranged eight of the titles here,
as he has reconstructed in the past countless film music manuscripts
previously lost to us by cost-cutting accountants who consigned them
to skips or bonfires.
This album is a truly valuable addition to growing amount
of our home-grown film music heritage finally restored for posterity.
And its not just that its “film music” – this is music of the first order
per se, performed with vigour and feeling by a conductor and an orchestra
obviously committed to the repertoire. The recording is set in
quite an expansive acoustic, but the detail is still defined and the overall
ambience warm and winning. Not everyone will have even heard of
Francis Chagrin or many of the films he scored (although Philip Lane’s
booklet notes provide an excellent potted biography and the low-down on all
the movies represented), not all are particularly partial to this vintage
mode of scoring British films, and still others, as mentioned above, would
not give any film music a CD spin, but none of this can detract from these
Francis Chagrin compositions making for a superlative listening experience.
David Wishart