The Film Music from MGM Musicals

Now added to the Chandos Movies label is this disc of popular classics from MGM.

Newly repackaged to be included under the ever-growing Chandos Movies label, this disc includes songs from such classics as Kismet, Singin’ in the rain and the Ziegfeld Follies.

The works on this disc have been orchestrated by Conrad Salinger, MGM’s prime orchestrator from the early forties to the early sixties.

This mid-price disc is conducted by Elmer Bernstein, one of America’s most distinguished composers for film and television with over 20 major scores to his name. Aaron Copland was his mentor for some time and his compossitions include the soundtracks for The Man with the Golden Arm, Walk on the Wild Side, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven and, more recently, My Left Foot, The Age of Innocence and Keeping the Faith.

At their best, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals were masterpieces. From the earliest days of ‘Talkies’ all the Hollywood studios made musicals. The 1930s are remembered for Busby Berkeley at Warner Bros., and for the Astaire-Rogers partnership at RKO, but once MGM established its pre-eminence in the 1940s it had no serious rival.

If there was ever one man responsible for giving MGM musicals their unique sound it was Conrad Salinger. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1901, he graduated from Harvard in 1923 and, like many of his generation, went to France to study.

In 1943 he signed a permanent contract with MGM and, for nearly twenty years, scarcely a notable MGM musical was produced on which he did not work, channelling his creativity into arranging countless songs and production numbers.

In films there were fewer restrictions than in the theatre, giving Salinger the opportunity to paint on a large canvas. His scores are studded with detail, with incidental subtleties and small felicities of all kinds; but they are never cluttered, never made-up to the point at which glamour becomes over-kill. Occasionally he ventured into jazz or swing or big-band territory and he could be big, bold and brassy if the occasion demanded. But the real Salinger lies in the deluxe quality of orchestra, texture exemplified by ‘Dancing in the Dark’, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and ‘The Heather on the Hill’: a quality born of his feeling for beauty of timbre, for mood, for atmosphere, for nuance, above all for line, for the give-and-take of melody and counter-melody.

The Film Music from MGM Musicals

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Elmer Bernstein

Ambrosian Singers

Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London

Brian Couzens

Ralph Couzens

Richard Lee

Orchestral & Concertos

The Film Music from MGM Musicals

WRIGHT/FORREST

Bridal Procession (Night of my Nights) from 'Kismet'

FRANCIS SCHWARTZ

Dancing in the Dark (pas de deux) from 'The Band Wagon'

BLANE/MARTIN

The Trolley Song from 'Meet Me in St Louis'

LERNER/LOEWE

Titles and Fountain Scene from 'Gigi'

Waltz Sequence from 'Gigi'

BROWN/FREED

Singin' in the Rain from 'Singin' in the Rain'

COLE PORTER

The Pirate Ballet from 'The Pirate'

LERNER/LOEWE

The Heather on the Hill (vocal and ballet) from 'Brigadoon'

WARREN/FREED/EDENS

This Heart of Mine from 'The Ziegfeld Follies'*