John Wilson and The John Wilson Orchestra at the BBC Proms, the Royal Albert Hall, 2013: The Full Program of Hollywood Rhapsody

Was bummed out to hear that John won’t be doing Britten’s The Turn of the Screw at Wilton’s Music Hall in London this month so to cheer everybody up, here’s the FULL 2-HOUR PROGRAM of my John and The John Wilson Orchestra at the Proms, 2013. That’s Jane Monheit, John, and Matt Ford below.

The entire BBC Proms concert Hollywood Rhapsody with the The John Wilson Orchestra is available here.

• 20th Century Fox Fanfare (from the studio, 1933) / Alfred Newman
• Street Scene (from the 1931 film; Sam Goldwyn/United Artists) / Alfred Newman
• “Confetti” (from Forever, Darling; MGM, 1956) / Bronislaw Kaper
• Laura (suite; from the 1944 film; 20th Century Fox, 1944) / David Raksin
• Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra (from the 1960 film; Paramount) / Bernard Herrmann
• Salammbo’s Aria (from Citizen Kane; RKO, 1941) / Bernard Herrmann (with Russian soprano Venera Gimadieva)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (from the 1938 film; Warner Bros) / Erich Korngold
• 25-MINUTE INTERVAL In which my beloved John, at 41 years old back in 2013, pours out his hopes and dreams.
• The Big Country (from the 1958 film; United Artists) / Jerome Moross
• Casablanca (suite from the film; Warner Bros, 1942) / Max Steiner, Schneckenburger, Wilhelm, de Lisle, Herman Hupfeld
• SONG MEDLEY:
  – “An Affair to Remember” (from the 1957 film; 20th Century Fox) / Harry Warren, Leo McCarey (the film’s director), Harold Damson
  – “Something’s Gotta Give” (from Daddy Long Legs; 20th Century Fox, 1955) / Johnny Mercer
  – “Young at Heart” (from the 1955 film; Warner Bros) / Johnny Richards, Carolyn Leigh
  – “It’s Magic” (from Romance On the High Seas; Warner Bros, 1948) / Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn
  – “The Tender Trap” (from the 1955 film; MGM) / Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn
  – “My Foolish Heart” (from the 1949 film; Samuel Goldwyn/RKO) / Ned Washington, Victor Young
  – “Three Coins in the Fountain” (from the 1954 film; 20th Century Fox) / Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn
  – “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing” (from the 1955 film; 20th Century Fox) / Sammy Fain, Paul Francis Webster
  – “That’s Amore” (from The Caddy; Paramount, 1953) / Harry Warren, Jack Brooks
  – “Que Sera, Sera” (from The Man Who Knew Too Much; Paramount, 1956  / Jay Livingston, Ray Evans
  – “All the Way” (from The Joker is Wild, 1957; Paramount) / Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn
• A Place In the Sun (suite from the 1951 film; Paramount) / Franz Waxman
• Tom and Jerry (from the MGM cartoons; 1940-58) / Scott Bradley
• Ben-Hur (suite from the film; MGM, 1959) / Miklós Rózsa

 

• “The Story So Far, with Conductor John Wilson”
• “The Story So Far; Or, Conductor John Wilson—His Limits”

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Silly Sexy Love Songs: “You Can Leave Your Hat On” Written by Randy Newman and Sung by Tom Jones

Dedicated to my beloved conductor John Wilson, of course.

Getting rid of the evidence; or, So you’ve been Banksy-ed, John. Consider it an honor.

• “The Story So Far, with Conductor John Wilson”
• “The Story So Far; Or, Conductor John Wilson—His Limits”

West Side Story In Concert Performed Oedipally by John Wilson and The John Wilson Orchestra at the BBC Proms, 2018; Lovingly by the San Francisco Symphony Conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, 2013

A few postings ago (“On Conductor John Wilson’s Full Dress and The First Porn Movie I Ever Did, 1”) I said, “I’m in love with John but he plows through Gershwin like a bull moose and treats Bernstein like Bernstein’s Saruman and he’s Frodo.” Well…he was pretty respectful in his “Highlights from Candide” Proms show in 2015, and I have faith that somehow, somewhere during The Bernstein Year (2018) my bonny got through “The Age of Anxiety” with a clear conscience. But the crowning glory of my beloved John Wilson, Conductor‘s relationship with composer Leonard Bernstein is supposed to be, by his own estimation, West Side Story, which he claims he’s conducted “a lo’, I’ve done a few complete productions of it”—so he should know what it’s all about, at least musically, right?

But first, let’s get that other business out of the way concerning John’s WSS attempt of 2018. I HATE HATE HATE to see The Race Card being played. Usually I try to avoid having to address the issue but sometimes it’s right in your face. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read about it here.  Then read about the outcome here.

Know what I think? In the past few years I’ve begun to believe, and I’m probably coming late to this, that when Orwell was writing about Big Brother, he was really talking about the BBC. This is probably sooo evident to a lot of people, but I’ve been paying steady attention to BBC for only about the last ten years and I’ve watched it devolve in ways previously unimaginable to me, so highly did I once esteem this radio/TV/internet broadcaster. So when I tell you I suspect that it was the Beeb behind that inane shuffling of sopranos and no one else, I do have a basis. (But not to go into that now. I’ll get to it when I talk in detail about Oklahoma!—and The Race Card—again.)

To get back to John, The John Wilson Orchestra, and West Side Story at the Royal Albert Hall, BBC Proms, 2018. Why the story above tells another possible story: One – soprano announces her withdrawal from the BBC Proms (that is, her reneging on her contract with the BBC) in April; two – five months later in August the new soprano is announced, a blatantly bogus attempt at more politically-correct casting, but anyway; three – at the same time, and only then, the show’s musical format is, for the first time in wide advertising, properly described as the official concert version. Which, let’s face it, makes the racial makeup of any of the singers totally irrelevant. Do you hear me squawking over Kim Criswell doing “Bali Ha’i”?

So in all this hoo-ha there’s John, who has absolutely nothing to do with the matter but nevertheless possibly, probably feels just a bit tainted by it, and who goes to his beloved orchestra with a “Gentlemen, ladies, that’s rise above this, shall we?” attitude, and a “Let’s give it all we’ve got!” kind of gungho-ness I last saw in Back to Bataan.

Because that’s how it came out in the music. Listening to the concert online, I got that same unsettling feeling you get some nights when you suspect your boyfriend’s especially poundy lovemaking isn’t actually directed at you. It was almost unbearable to take. Even Mister Grumble left the room. Before leaving he pointed an accusing finger at me, “This is your John Wilson,” he intoned darkly. “He’s not mine,” I answered. “He belongs to England!” But I couldn’t pull off that Vivien Leigh delivery so that bit just died.

But you know, I think that’s the crux of the matter, John being English and a Geordie and therefore too pigheaded to truly understand the American idiom. That, and Big Brother Beeb breathing down your neck, can cramp anyone’s sense of freedom, freedom of course being the American idiom.

I’m assuming, of course, that John, vaunted musicologist that he is, truly wants to understand the American idiom.

Of the 2013 concert, said Joshua Kosman in the SF Chronicle: “One of the great revelations of Thursday’s dynamic concert performance by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony was just how remarkable the score sounds in isolation… Bernstein’s creation stood more or less alone as a compendium of all the musical references swirling around in that great musical clearinghouse that was his mind.”

Above Lenny and MTT: Quartet from the ground-breaking San Francisco Symphony concert version of West Side Story, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, Bernstein’s true heir to the podium. Below: The Dance at the Gym sequence from West Side Story. Once again, MTT with the SFSO, 2013, who released the recording on their own label in 2014.

1 Blues | 2 Promenade | 3 Mambo |4 Cha-Cha | 5 Meeting | 6 Jump

• “The Story So Far, with Conductor John Wilson”
• “The Story So Far; Or, Conductor John Wilson—His Limits”

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Murder On the Orient Express by Richard Rodney Bennett, Played by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, with the Composer on Piano, and Conducted by Marcus Dods (1974)

I must’ve seen this movie four, five times when it first came out, when matinees were cheap, and what kept calling me back—besides the lovely, lush, immersive experience of just sinking back into an engaging and sensually-satisfying film in an air-conditioned theater in the middle of smelly, sticky, hot Manhattan—was, of course, the music. I really, really dug the score, just like I really dug the score of Walton (mostly)’s Battle of Britain (@1:20), a few years earlier, and went back matinees to go hear it again and again. Which doesn’t mean I like all of Richard Rodney Bennett; I think I’ve gone to almost every other movie he did a score for and can’t remember the music to any of them.

But this one I could whistle for years, decades, afterwards, and the only thing that recently brought it back to mind was—yes! yes!—falling in love with my bonny conductor John Wilson, the Francois Villon of the podium. Because of his association with Bennett, you see. Oh, they owned a house together or some such relationship [download PDF of Feb 2020 issue of Gramophone here], but that’s not what I’m talking about. Back when John was 28, he and Bennett—and The John Wilson Orchestra!!!—got together to record, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, an abomination called Orchestral Jazz. So I’m figuring that anything my bonny lad knows about jazz has to’ve come from this guy, and the trouble is, I really can’t find anything that would lead me to believe Bennett knew anything at all about jazz, except that he once partnered with jazz singer Claire Martin, and she’s pretty genuine.

Directed by Sidney Lumet, whose first film was about another dozen people meting out justice, 12 Angry Men (United Artists, 1957). Above Jean-Pierre: “The Orient Express“. Composer Richard Rodney Bennett on piano, Marcus Dods conducting the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, 1974.

But when it comes to purely orchestral music, Bennett shows that he knows a thing or two, Royal Academy graduate that he is. I’m glad, because his complete score for the film Murder on the Orient Express (Paramount, 1974) is probably the last example of a type of music they call over there English Light Music, which flourished on and off for about a hundred years since the 1870s, and is defined by easily accessible melodies and lush, decorative orchestration. In other words, music that’s delicious to hear and easy to digest. And while Murder has slightly campy touches in that Ivor Novello-Noel Coward way, Bennett essentially knew who his audience was, and what they wanted.

EMI in 2014 reissued the entire original soundtrack score, with Bennett at the piano and Marcus Dods conducting the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

• “The Story So Far, with Conductor John Wilson”
• “The Story So Far; Or, Conductor John Wilson—His Limits”

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The Silent Musician by Mark Wigglesworth, Richard Wagner, Cosmic Sex, and My Beloved Conductor John Wilson

In an earlier post I mentioned that, since May a couple years ago, I’ve been reading books by orchestra conductors on conducting, in order to better glimpse into the unfamiliar heart and mind of my beloved John Wilson. That classic tome written by Richard Wagner was far out, of course, and going back to some of Leonard Bernstein‘s early writings was deeply nostalgic.

But it was my treatment of a book my bonny conductor had on his public Facebook Likes list that done me in—a thin, and thinly humorous, volume written by a coeval of John’s who let out his dirigental insecurities in a tirade of snark that I answered in kind in a long, 4-star Amazon review that I thought was hilarious, which it was, although apparently only to me. I did this to get John’s attention. I got it. John did not like what I wrote. Hence, he learned how to spell my name ab-so-lute-ly correctly.

Now, Mark Wigglesworth has a 30-year career conducting a number of the great operas and a number of the great symphony cycles, to much acclaim. If there is one thing that John’s friend’s book made evident, in its perverted way, it’s the importance of a conductor being holistically grounded, and Wigglesworth is, as we used to say in the 70s, a grounded guy. Not surprising for someone who has Alan Watts on his shelf; and since the English-born psychedelic Zen guru of San Francisco is one of my guiding lights too, it was a deep pleasure to read The Silent Musician, Wigglesworth’s musings on his inner/outer artistic journey as a conductor. Wigglesworth, from Sussex, is an acclaimed interpreter of Gustav Mahler as well as Wagner, two creative heavyweights who positively require those who would approach their work to have had a fair look first into their own personal psychological-spiritual makeup. Consider Daniel Barenboim—one artist on the world stage I respect the hell out of—and his own moral / philosophical / logistical grapplings with the Architect of Bayreuth (download his “Wagner and Ideology” here and let me just say, if Barenboim figured it out I’m satisfied).

Speaking of Wagner, a few years ago Wigglesworth conducted the overture to a Wagner opera I’ll bet you’ve never heard of: Das Liebesverbot, or, The Ban on Love. I only know about this one because I took the mandatory survey course at music school at the university and never ran into it again till now. So this is the first and only thing I’ve ever heard from this opera:

Overture to Das Liebesverbot (1836)
Richard Wagner
Mark Wigglesworth, conductor
BBC Orchestra Wales

Or will ever hear, ever again. Just a bit…Mediterranean, wouldn’t you say?

But what amazes me more is the libretto, because Wagner—get this—chose for his source material the scuzziest, meanest sex comedy ever written, which is, of course, Measure by Measure by William Shakespeare. Yes, at the end hypocrisy is vanquished and everyone gets laid, but eeeeuuwww…

Now, think on the twenty-three year psychological-spiritual journey from Das Liebesverbot to this:

“Mild und leise” from Tristan and Isolde (1859)
Richard Wagner
Daniel Barenboim, conductor
Waltraud Meier, soprano
Beyreuth, 1995

I’m sorry, but when I hear that tune I want to see this face.

For the rest of you, behold Maestro Wagner.

• “The Story So Far, with Conductor John Wilson”
• “The Story So Far; Or, Conductor John Wilson—His Limits”

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Three Songs from the Great Yiddish Songbook: “Bei mir bist du shoen” Sung by the Barry Sisters; “Rumania Rumania” Sung by Tosca; and “Lekhayim” from the 2018 Yiddish Fiddler On the Roof

I have a heavyweight posting coming so here’re some nice tunes to tide all of you over:

“Bei mir bist du shoen”
by Jacob Jacobs and Sholom Secunda (1932)
sung by the Barry Sisters

“Rumania Rumania”
by Aaron Lebedeff (1925)
sung by Tosca Donati

“Lekhayim”
from Fiddler On the Roof (Grey dir, 2018)
Entirely in Yiddish
by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (English, 1964)
translation by Shraga Friedman
Complete cast album here.

Boris and Bessie Thomashevsky, because the guy refuses to leave.

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A Laughs and Tenderness Break: Molly Picon Sings “Oyfen Pripetchik” in Car 54, Where Are You?

We certainly all need some tenderness and a couple laughs right now. Below, the wonderful, luminous Molly Picon—who worked with legendary actor-producer-director-impressario-rival-to-Jacob-Adler-Stella’s-dad-model-for-Max-Bialystock-grandfather-of-Michael-Tilson-Thomas Boris Thomashevsky—sings “Oyfen Pripetchik” (MM Warshawsky 1848–1907), an enduring, evocative song from the past that everyone at a certain time, in a certain place seems to have known the melody and all the words to. From season 2, episode 6 of the comedy masterpiece show, Car 54, Where Are You? And really, dig the punch line ending.

Below, a lovely rendition from Israeli singer Chava Alberstein.

Could you say no to this woman?

Oyfn pripetchik brent a fayerl,
Un in shtub is heys.
Un der rebe lernt kleyne kinderlekh
Dem alef-beyz.

Zet zhe kinderlekh,
Gedenkt zhe, tayere, vos ir lernt do.
Zogt zhe nokh a mol un take nokh a mol:
“Komets-alef: o!”

Lernt kinderlekh, lernt mit freyd,
Lernt dem alef-beyz.
Gliklekh is der Yid, wos kent die toyre
Un dos alef-beyz.

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