Elmer Bernstein was one of the great film composers – across multiple decades, across all genres of film, there he was writing his wonderful music. There was a particular quality to his brand of Americana which made it so appealing: joy. Across most of his classic scores, I always find myself sitting there imagining him conducting them with a smile on his face. When I was lucky enough to see him conduct at the Royal Albert Hall in 2001, it turned out to be exactly that way – the delight on his face when the audience spontaneously started clapping along to The Great Escape, at one point him audibly singing along to The Ten Commandments while conducting it – and his joy, his music’s joy, was forever infectious.
More than the music he wrote, he was also notable for being such a big champion of the art of film music. While many of the genuinely great film composers tend to be somewhat dismissive of its place, Bernstein was quite the opposite, and his personal efforts to preserve great film music most obviously came to a head in the late 1970s with his Elmer Bernstein Film Music Collection series of exceptional re-recordings of classic scores.
The great man sadly passed away in 2004; to mark the centenary of his birth in 2022, a concert took place in Dublin with Ireland’s National Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer’s son Peter. A mix of the predictable classics with some less-frequently-performed works (including some premieres), this album is the recording of that concert and is the debut release from a new label, Willow and Cavern. It is the full live recording (audience noise and applause included) and in between all the wonderful music we hear from the evening’s host Tim Burden (such a great raconteur), conductor P Bernstein and special guest Robert Townson, always such a champion of Bernstein’s music.
All aspects of the composer’s music are on display. We open with the sweeping theme from Hollywood and the Stars, a tv documentary series from the early 1960s – it’s so full of Hollywood glitz and glamour. Next comes the music which for many people still defines the sound of the American west, The Magnificent Seven, one of cinema’s most iconic themes – surely only Aaron Copland (clearly a massive influence) could be considered a rival at musically depicting all those wide open spaces so effectively.
After a period of scoring a lot of comedies and lower-profile movies away from the Hollywood mainstream Bernstein seemed to find a new enthusiasm when he got to work with Martin Scorsese on his handsome adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence in 1993 a couple of years after adapting Bernard Herrmann’s music for the director’s remake of Cape Fear – his graceful, elegant, imposing music is amongst his finest and gets a terrific, lengthy suite here.
One of the reasons for the concert being held in Dublin was that the composer – unusually for such a big Hollywood name – recorded several of his scores there, including that for Jim Sheridan’s acclaimed My Left Foot. His achingly beautiful music provides very delicately-balanced support.
I’ve mentioned the comedies – famously Bernstein got sick of them after a while, having rather improbably found himself to be the go-to composer for the genre through most of the 1980s. They’re represented here by a lengthy suite newly-arranged by Peter and it’s great fun, featuring music from no fewer than eight of them – The Blues Brothers, Animal House, Airplane! (my favourite), Stripes, Ghostbusters, Spies Like Us, Trading Places and Three Amigos!
Several decades earlier, Bernstein became (with his contemporaries Alex North and Leonard Rosenman) one of the first film composers to introduce jazz onto the scene with his wildly-popular music for The Man with the Golden Arm. While that score doesn’t feature here, two others do which are in that vein: the toe-tappingly addictive dynamite theme from Walk on the Wild Side and the wonderfully smoky Sweet Smell of Success.
Alongside the comedies Bernstein also scored a few big post-Star Wars science fiction movies during the 80s – most of them weren’t really very good but there’s no doubting the composer’s commitment and I’ve always thought his music for Slipstream, the 1989 Mark Hamill movie, was particularly good. Here we get a barnstorming new suite from the score which is really terrific.
Following that comes one of the composer’s indelible, timeless masterpieces – indeed, perhaps the most indelible and timeless of them all, To Kill a Mockingbird. From his most delicate main theme through the exuberant musical expression of childish innocence, film music doesn’t get any better than this and hearing it is always such a poignant, moving experience.
As well as their famed contribution to the development of modern architecture and furniture design, Charles and Ray Eames also had a passion for photography and made a huge number of short films over the years. Bernstein’s music for 1957’s Toccata for Toy Trains has taken on a life of its own and this revised suite of it is delightfully playful.
I mentioned Cape Fear and The Age of Innocence earlier but the composer’s first collaboration with Martin Scorsese was actually slightly earlier than this, with the latter serving as producer on Stephen Frears’s crime thriller The Grifters. While Frears didn’t really make the best use of the music, it lives on on its own terms, the unusual, dark comedy hints in the main theme a real highlight.
Amongst Bernstein’s many contributions to the western genre were several films starring perhaps its most famous leading man, John Wayne, and there is a newly-arranged suite here from True Grit including that spectacular main theme; and speaking of spectacular, it doesn’t get much grander or more rousing than The Ten Commandments, which the composer famously got to score after its original composer Victor Young fell ill, and which really launched his career into the stratosphere.
The encores are the brilliantly catchy if brief National Geographic theme and – of course – the simply wonderful main theme from The Great Escape. Then the album ends with a real rarity – Bernstein’s own arrangement of the Irish National Anthem, receiving its premiere recording.
As well as the complete concert recording there’s a shorter “highlights” album, but any Bernstein fan will want the whole thing. The booklet includes a reproduction of the full concert brochure from the evening itself (including tributes to the composer from some rather esteemed fans, such as a certain John Williams). It’s a spectacular tribute to a much-beloved legend of film music, one of its greatest practitioners and also one of its greatest exponents. Don’t miss out on this one.
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