Showing posts with label Lord Berners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lord Berners. Show all posts

29 January 2009

Music for Mid-Century British Films


Although this is an American Columbia LP, it mostly consists of recordings of British film music circa mid-20th century.

The only well-known item on the record the one American item, Miklos Rozsa's music from Spellbound, here in a British performance. The best known composer represented is Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose beautiful score for the Loves of Joanna Godden was almost unknown until a recent re-recording.

Also on board are Allan Gray, with two very effective items, and Lord Berners, who wrote concert as well as film music. This is all that was ever recorded of Gray's film music.

Much of the record is devoted to three pieces by the now little-known (but very talented) Mischa Spoliansky. His A Voice in the Night from Wanted for Murder is one of the most effective of the many quasi-romantic piano concertos that turned up in film music following the success of Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto. That latter piece is not included here. However, I have added another Addinsell item as a bonus. It is the original recording of music from Passionate Friends by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Muir Mathieson, and it comes from a different Entre album that otherwise is not film music.