The problems involved
in arranging Steiner’s score for Naxos’s
‘Film Music Classics’ series are adroitly
laid out by John Morgan in the booklet
notes. Morgan cut the overture – comprising
main themes heard later – and then reduced
the hundred minute score to the seventy
we hear on the disc, principally by
getting rid of repetitions. Steiner’s
first choice orchestrator, Hugo Friedhofer,
was unavailable so the job fell to the
experienced Bernhard Kaun, who had to
cope with some colourful piquancies
that add much to the score – an extended
bassoon solo, and a role for steel guitar
amongst others.
The score may not be
as well known as others by Steiner but
much of the reason must surely lie in
the fact that the film is not as well
known. Steiner eloquently welds Americana
with established post-Wagnerian material
and the results are consistently exciting
and uplifting, as well as humorous and
warm-hearted. After the main title -
big spectrum response, always captivating
to hear – we hear the serio-comic lower
winds that herald the arrival of the
Pirates (cue 2) accompanied by
the banjo plunk that consistently undercuts
them. There’s a sense of bigness, of
vistas, and of grandeur, in The River
Pilot (cue 4) whilst in cue 6, The
Mule – Digging – Cave In we hear
how attuned Steiner had become to a
lazy jazzy swing; the muted trumpet
and wa-wa that announces the cave in
is particularly impressive. It’s in
the frog scene that the bassoon comes
very much to the fore – Morgan’s amusing
note relates how the player in the Moscow
Symphony asked for a deferment and took
the score home overnight to practise
it. Elsewhere Steiner indulges in some
pertinent quotations (Clementine for
the Gold Rush, The Battle Hymn
of the Republic for General Grant,
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot for the cue
marked Sorrow) or else mines
a prankish Til Eulenspiegel spirit in
track 11, The Squirrel. For the
World Tour (track 23) we have
some exotic locations, hence the steel
guitar. The Bells of Oxford certainly
have an Imperial swagger and the Rule
Britannia theme rings out defiantly.
With the reprise (track 29) we get a
real chorus to send us on our way.
In fact all the vicissitudes
of river life, of theatrical charm,
of chase, sly wit, affection and humour
are evoked in this splendidly realised
disc. The Moscow Symphony and Stromberg
are getting to be old hands at this
repertoire and it shows. My review copy
is a Surround Sound SACD/CD hybrid,
which was played on an ordinary CD set
up, sounding spacious and warm.
Jonathan Woolf
As above but this is a SACD/CD hybrid,
details below
NAXOS 8.557470
[70:49]
see
review by Ian Lace
