The Film Music of Sir Arthur Bliss [Soundtrack]

According to which account you read, H.G. Wells either loved Bliss' music for his prophetic "Things To Come", hated it, wanted it, didn't want it, didn't care, or never gave an opinion one way or the other.

Regardless of all that, the music is simply staggering. It is one of the great achievements not only in the genre of film composition, but in the broader genre of 20th Century British music in general.

This recording does full service, I feel, to Sir Arthur's legendary score. It is not as, shall we say, dramatic, as the great Bernard Herrmann's reading, but it hews much closer to the original intent of the composer, at least so far as we can ascertain.

Conductor Rumon Gamba, yet again, shines forth, as does this wonderful orchestra.

Kudos all around.

This CD is really an engrossing and riviting concert consisting of a sampling of confections from three film symponies, a newsreel, and several televison programs. But you would never know it unless you checked the disc's back cover and booket. The CD is seamless! Very few film-score composers have actually constructed film (or TV) symphonies. Sir Arther is one; Erick Wolfgang Korngold is another. It's usually the music that underlines the main credits and the closing credits that define the film "score" (the in-between is often tedious, repetitious, and, let's be honest here, boring--which is why we have "film suites" on complication CDs!). Bliss came from the concert hall, and his score for the 1936 film THINGS TO COME (arranged and reconstructed brillantly on this CD by Mr. Philip Lane) was a radical (and risky) departure for the composer. But as is often the end-result with true film symponies, the music survives and is treasured while the film often ends up the ash can. Don't be put off by the funky CD cover. This is a CD of serious and splendiferous film music. It rarely gets better than this!

If the Marco Polo CD, under "Adriano," of the scores for "Seven Waves Away," "Christopher Columbus," and "Man of Two Worlds" were still available, then, with the splendid new Chandos CD, under Rumon Gamba, it would be possible to assemble the complete film-music of Sir Arthur Bliss (1891-1975). The Chandos issue is a real treat. It includes the march "Welcome the Queen" (1953), originally written for a short film about Elizabeth II in the first year of her reign, a new suite from the score to "Things to Come" (1936), abandoned music for a film of Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" (1945), music for a BBC travelogue on "The Royal Palaces" (1966), and, at last, the main-title from the documentary "War in the Air" (1954). Gamba leads the BBC Philharmonic. The center of attention on the program will be the suite from "Things to Come," the H.G. Wells' science fiction epic produced by Alexander Korda and directed by William Cameron Menzies, which set the mark for the genre for the rest of the century; Bliss's score established the canons of the symphonic cinema accompaniment, with big gestures and bright colors, numerous marches and fanfares, and a distinctly Elgarian apotheosis for the climax. An album of excerpts, led by Bliss, on 78rpm sides became a best-seller even before the film had its premiere. The fate of the score paralleled the fate of the film, which was to be cut down to two from its original three hours, and then again to ninety minutes for American distribution. Bliss salvaged a rousing March, which had an independent life as a program-filler, and recorded a suite of truncated passages, in stereo, for Decca, in the late-1950s. The current reconstructed suite, done by Philip Lane, at long last salvages the important "machine ballet" from the sequence called "The Building of the New World," the most distinctively "modern" music in the score. Lane wisely omits the Christmas carols from the opening "War" sequence, included by John Mauceri on a Philips CD, which disrupt the atmosphere. At over thirty minutes, Lane's arrangement gives the best representation yet of the full panoply of this remarkable music. Only slightly less epic in its sweep is the score for "Caesar and Cleopatra." Bliss plays it straight, avoiding the mock-antique style that Miklos Rosza would bring to the genre in the 1950s, but supplying the brilliant retail that makes his music instantly recognizable. After Bliss withdrew from the project, Georges Auric provided the score. Bliss wrote "The Royal Palaces" for television; the music is "veddy veddy British," as befits the subject, but not so original as "Things to Come" or "Caesar and Cleopatra." We have, finally, the thrilling, warm-hearted "Welcome the Queen," close in spirit to Walton's royal marches, and the main title for "War in the Air," which is rather in the vein of "Things to Come" when it depicts the aerial New World Order in the last of its sequences. The booklet is quite good, with detailed accounts of all the items on the program. This is the first time that I've ever heard of Rumon Gamba, who leads the BBC Philharmonic in thrilling performances. The main thing to be said about this music is that none of it is mere film-accompaniment. Like Prokofiev's, Bliss's film-music stands on its own; it is symphonic in dimension and deeply satisfying. The CD itself is embossed with a film-poster image from "Things to Come," which also decorates the booklet. Nifty and recommended.