Posts By: willcwhite

Great Moments in Classical Music Cinematography

Lots of blog space has been devoted to the various horrors of classical music LP and CD cover art.  But methinks a great deal of plumbing is left to do in the world of video!

1. Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1
Alexis Weissenberg, pianist; Herbert von Karajan, conductor

Let’s start with this chestnut from Herbert von Karajan, an entertainment dynamo whose vast ego pushed him to ever more creative, and ludicrous, video projects.  It’s moments like this that have made his an ever-reliable name in the cringe department:

The color scheme, the obvious miming on the part of the musicians, the irreverent placement of wind players, the great “action shot” literally coming from the piano’s action with no discernable movement from the hammers: it’s a veritable smorgasbord of delights.  [Not to mention that 2:10 – 2:20ish makes a very convincing case for filming classical music performances in 3D!]

2. Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra, mvmt. 4
Lorin Maazel, conductor

So, lot to pick apart here.  First, there’s the fact that Maestro Maazel seems to be communicating with his home planet during the opening 10 seconds of this clip.  Then there’s his utterly unique solution to the tricky meter transition right around 2:19. [By the way, let me just interrupt here and say that one often hears about Loren Maazel being a conductor with a flawless technique.  I mean, 4rlz?  My sneaking suspicion is that the original source for this popular opinion is none other than… Lorin Maazel.  I’m not saying that he’s a bad conductor AT ALL… or am I?]

Then of course there’s all the camera spinning, the gong action, the trombones, etc…

3. Beethoven, Egmont Overture
Sergiu Celibidache, conductor

OK, so I’ll finish this installment with a little gem that first came to my attention via one of those “The Art of Conducting” VHSs that I used to watch like 10 times a day when I was in high school.  A very young Celibidache conducting Beethoven’s “Egmont”:

There’s no fancy camera work here, but there is some amazing editing (I mean, come on, 7:13? Srsly u guys?) and the fact that Celibidache’s hair looks like it was spring loaded by the special effects department.  And then there’s that set, which, what exactly is it?  Might it be a discarded “Lion’s Den” from a production of Der Freischütz.  For a nation destroyed by war, trying to reclaim its international reputation by means of its illustrious artistic tradition, this was an… interesting choice.

Two questions

Better put, two question groups.

Question Group the first relates to this video:

You guys, does anyone else think it’s weird that Valery Gergiev is dressed like a trucker in the Leningrad Denny’s (Денниз) at 2:00 am?  I mean, I know that the whole unkempt look is like, his thing or whatever, but come on, baseball cap?  Really?  And doesn’t it just make his already eccentric Fluttering Butterfly conducting moves look even more bizarre?

Meanwhile, Gautier Capuçon looks like a contestant in a River Phoenix/Johnny Depp lovechild lookalike contest.  It’s all about contrast, people.

Question Group the second is all about why won’t La Piel Que Habito just open already, in this country, in my city, NOW?

Pedro Almodóvar is the reigning king of the cinema.  I mean, is anybody seriously going to dispute that?  There are other great directors out there, but Almodóvar consistently writes, directs, and releases a new film almost every other year that maintains or raises his already incredibly high standards.  Each one explores similar themes, re-intermingled and re-imagined, so that they all have that Almodóvar stamp and are all so completely different.

And yet, we have to wait months and months after the European premier of each new film to see it in the U.S.  Not only is this the best art that we have available to us IN THE WORLD, but this movie has Antonio freaking Banderas in it.  Who wouldn’t like that?

There were all these rumors that La Piel was going to be different, that they were going to release the movie all over the world at the same time, something about the Spanish government not enforcing international copyright law and blah blah blah just give the movie, alright??

So now the movie just opened in Britain, strangely enough before the Sept. 2 opening in Spain (um, what?).  And then it’s only being released in New York/LA on October 14 or something?  Ugh!  Just bequeath it unto the world, Pedro!  We will love you for it heartily.

In the meanwhile, you can watch more, and listen extensively.  A little Alberto Iglesias goes a long way to calming down my frazzled nerves, y’all.

Mulligan

My friend Will made an excellent film called Mulligan, set for release in 2012.  He kindly asked me to write the score and his producers kindly allowed me to post some of the music I wrote here.

Mulligan centers around an emotionally stunted 30-year-old loser, John, who can”t get past the fraught relationship he had with his father (now deceased).  He channels his emotions into a “pictorial epic” called Golfing with Apollo – a comic book in which the god Apollo serves as his own heroic alter ego.

Here”s the opening title sequence in which the main character feverishly draws, paints, writes and splatters his ideas onto the page.  There”s some really brilliant animation that goes along with this sequence:

Here”s the “Nostalgia” theme:

And here”s a later comic book scene that deals with reconciliation (hence the reappearance of the Nostalgia music):

There’s a mystery at the center of the plot, as John seeks to uncover the money his father secretly buried where only he (John) could find it, thus proving that he (the father) did love him (John) after all.  I”ll spare you the various “Spooky” cues as they go hunting for the loot and run into a variety of shady characters, but I will include the director”s favorite music, a cue called “Mystery”:

And here’s the composer”s favorite, the “Nostalgia Tarantella”, a delightful romp based on the Nostalgia theme:

More reasons to love Hector Berlioz

Because he composed his Roméo et Juliette and called it a “dramatic legend”, since no genre was big enough for him, and because in the section depicting the Ball at the Capulets, he begins with a melody expressing Roméo’s grief, which sounds like this:

and follows it with a theme representing the masq’d ball itself, which sounds like this:

and then he combines the two themes together (which sounds like this:)

Those are all great reasons to love Hector Berlioz, but the best reason is that, at the spot in the score where he overlays the two themes, he actually wrote these very words and had them typeset and printed in the published score

so that noone would miss this masterful stroke of compositional prowess and fail to recognize his genius.  Forget the fact that the art of counterpoint was well over 700 years old, and that people like Bach and Tallis had composed far more complex contrapuntal textures simply for the Grace of God — no, M. Berlioz did what every other composer wishes he had the cojones to do, and let you know exactly how good he was, in three different languages.

Bravo, Hector.