Amazon.co.uk:
Let's start by talking about the 80th-birthday concert.
Elmer Bernstein:
I'm going to do a lot of high-profile things. The second half of
the concert will have To Kill a Mockingbird
, The Man with
the Golden Arm
, Walk on the Wild Side
and The
Magnificent Seven
. I'm going to start with the overture to
Hawaii
(1966), but then, if things work out, I will do a world
premiere of music from a film that will be released at Thanksgiving time,
called Far from Heaven
(2002). I'm also going to do something
that has been much requested, which is music from a film called Kings of
the Sun
(1963).
Amazon.co.uk:
Are you are going to rerecord that score?
Bernstein:
I was going to do it this year, but I never got a moment to do it.
But I will eventually. Also as the concert is retrospective there are going to
be two new things. I am going to do a piece I wrote two or three years ago, a
Concerto for Guitar and
Orchestra, for Christopher Parkening. That will be a UK premiere.
Amazon.co.uk:
It's subtitled "The Two Christophers", Christopher Parkening and
Christopher Palmer…
Bernstein: 
Yes, Christopher Palmer was, in my lifetime, one of my two
all-time dearest personal friends. Many, many years ago, I was staying at the
Mayfair Hotel and I got a call from Christopher Palmer, whom I did not know. He
was writing an article about me for the Grove Dictionary of Music. And so we
met--this would have been in about 1974 or 73--and he wrote the article and it
was very nice. Two years later I was in London and I needed an orchestrator for
a film I was doing called The Incredible Sarah
(1976), and I
heard that Christopher Palmer had been doing some work with Miklós
Rózsa. So I called Micky and said, "So what do you think about this
Christopher Palmer? Do you think he could do a film?" And Micky said "Yeah,
give him a shot". And of course in 1976 Christopher Palmer orchestrated
The Incredible Sarah
, and everything I did after that until he
died. But the importance of Christopher Palmer goes far beyond his relationship
to me; his enthusiasm for film music and his resurrection of much of it. He
arranged so much music, called so much attention to it. Outside of the fact
that he was probably one of the greatest orchestrators who ever lived. I am
privileged to have his score library, which I got when he died. He was very
important.
Amazon.co.uk:
He introduced you to the instrument that has almost become your
signature over the last 20 years.
Bernstein:
In 1981 I guess it was, I did a lecture at the Britten-Pears
school in Aldeburgh and Christopher Palmer was the moderator of the session,
which was just me and Richard Rodney Bennett. During the course of the
conversation he and Richard kept talking about this thing called the "Ondes".
An instrument of which I had not heard. When it was over I said to Chris, "What
was this thing you were talking about all the time?" "Oh," he said, "The Ondes
Martenot, it's an electronic instrument. A French instrument, and as a matter
of fact its an instrument we could very well use in this film we are working on
right now." The film was Heavy Metal
(1981) and at that time the
queen of the instrument was a French lady called Jeanne Loriod. She came and
played the Ondes and I thought it was one of the best sounds I'd ever heard in
my life. I said, "We've got to get somebody who can learn this instrument." So
Christopher suggested this young lady whom we had both met at this same
lecture, Cynthia Millar. I called Cynthia and said, "You wanna learn this
instrument well enough so you can teach it to somebody else?" She went and
learned the instrument and love it, and the rest is history. She's now the
present day queen of the Ondes.
Amazon.co.uk:
And whenever you have a score featuring the Ondes she plays on the
soundtrack.
Bernstein:
Yes. There are many scores in which I've used the Ondes. What I'm
going to do on this programme is, instead of having the Ondes play a bunch of
bitty pieces, I'm composing a concert piece, about a 10-minute piece, for Ondes
and orchestra which contains the movie themes, and on which Cynthia plays. So
that'll be a world premiere.
Amazon.co.uk:
Have you decided which themes to include?
Bernstein:
I'm still fooling around with that. Heavy Metal
, of
course. Probably some from My Left Foot
(1989), possibly
The Good Mother
(1988), and Ghostbusters
.
There'll be about three or four films. It's a rare film in which you hear a
melody today. That's why I'm going to do this performance of Far From
Heaven
, because this is a film which goes back again with heavy
emphasis on melody.
Amazon.co.uk:
Do you find problems working with some of the younger
directors?
Bernstein:
One of the things I've been appalled by is that young directors
don't know the history of their own business. Just ignorance of what has gone
on in the past. A friend of mine recently did a film called Rat
Race
(2001) and didn't know that another film called Rat
Race
(1960) had been made with no less stars than Tony Curtis and
Debbie Reynolds (and for which Elmer Bernstein wrote the music!). Now there are
exceptions and the director I'm working with now, Todd Haynes, is an ernest
student and he knows a lot about the past of this business. Martin Scorsese
probably knows more about film music than any living director.
One
of the things I've been appalled by is that young directors don't know the
history of their own business
Amazon.co.uk:
When Scorsese made The Color of Money
(1986) he put
Walk on the Wild Side
on the soundtrack, so you almost worked
together before you actually worked together. Why was it when you came to do
his remake of Cape Fear
(1991) you re-arranged Bernard
Herrmann's score from the original 1962 film, rather than write a new score?
Bernstein:
Because when Marty did Cape Fear
he had already
decided that he was going to use the old score. That was his call. He even had
ideas of where he wanted bits of the music to be. I called Marty when I heard
he was doing that and I asked to do the film. Marty said "Why do you want to do
this? I mean, I'm planning to use the Herrmann music." I had never worked with
him yet as a director and I said, "I want the opportunity to work with you and
the opportunity to protect my friend Bernard Herrmann."
Amazon.co.uk:
You were good friends with Bernard Herrmann, and you did a
wonderful recording of The Ghost and Mrs Muir
(1947) in the
1970s. That was the same period Herrmann wrote his last score, which was for a
Scorsese's Taxi Driver
(1976).
I was supposed to
have a meal with Herrmann, and instead I did the eulogy at his memorial
service
Bernstein:
It was terrible. I was supposed to have a meal with Herrmann, and
instead I did the eulogy at his memorial service.
Amazon.co.uk:
And now you've become Martin Scorsese's composer of choice.
Bernstein:
He is so knowledgeable in all aspects of film making, that it's a
pleasure to work with somebody who knows what he is doing.
The Age of
Innocence was I think, my favourite score of the 1990s.
Amazon.co.uk:
And now you've done Scorsese's
Gangs of New
York. It's again set in the 19th century, which is unusual for
Scorsese.
Bernstein:
It's set in mid-19th-century New York, and is basically a film
which deals with serious unpleasantness between native Americans and the
incoming Irish immigrants on a working class level. It is about the struggle
between those two elements, part of which eventually is what made New York
great. Not the struggle, but the integration of the Irish. It's a very
different film for Scorsese because it is of epic proportions.
Amazon.co.uk:
What was your musical direction? How did you get inside the
film?
Bernstein:
It was very difficult in the sense that there's a tremendous
presence in the film of native Irish music: that is Uilleann pipes,
Bodhráns; Irish songs, that sort of thing. And it was actually very
difficult to find a language which lived very well together with all the
tremendous presence of the Irish folk music. So the score is what I would call
"objective". For instance, I didn't use any violins at all. Heavy emphasis on
brass, once again, drums and woodwind. It's not the kind of music that's going
to jump off the screen. It's on a huge canvas--the whole film's on a huge
canvas--but it's hard to describe, the whole film is hard to describe; when you
see it you will say, "I've never seen anything like this before." The feeling
about the film is just very, very different.
Amazon.co.uk:
Regarding The Great Escape
, how do you feel about
the way the march has been adopted by English football fans?
Bernstein:
I love it! Absolutely! I feel very flattered. I love that idea. I
don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but I did not schedule a performance of
The Great Escape
on this concert, but I'm going to use it as an
encore.
Amazon.co.uk:
And the other theme you did for a John Sturges picture, The
Magnificent Seven
, also has a life way beyond the film series. For many
years it was used to advertise a brand of cigarettes.
Bernstein:
Well, at the time it went to Malboro we did not yet know what a
dangerous thing cigarettes are. I think had it happened today I would feel very
differently about it. At the time it was OK, because the ads were very western,
and it all looked very rugged and manly and we really didn't know how many
people cigarettes were killing at that time. But The Magnificent
Seven
was a score I'd always wanted to write; I'd never had a chance to
do a big Western and I'd always wanted to do something like that, so I got it
all into one film!
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Elmer
Bernstein is known to millions for his themes for
