Higher learning?

Another great Battle Song!

Malcolm Arnold is damn good fun! He composed the music for "Bridge over the River Kwai", but I feel that he'll be remembered most for his music for the four "St. Trinians"(a girl's school that would have made the Germans and Russians in Eisenstein's epic, run in fear) movies!......in my opinion, of course.

Wow! This is REAL filmscore!

Prokofiev wrote this music for the Sergei Eisenstein's epic film "Alexander Nevsky". Later he compiled the music for a "Cantata" which is how we know the score today. It is ironic that Prokfiev died the same day as Stalin and would never get to know the "relaxed" artistic freedoms that Shostakovitch would later come to "enjoy".

Please get to know this fantastic music......it won't "hurt your ears"!

The Sea Hawk

Ah, the good old days! ENJOY!

Korngold's "Superman" Symphony!

Sadly, there is no clip of the second movement of Korngold's Symphony on YouTube. Should you purchase this glorious Symphony on CD, you will discover a theme in the second movement that sounds a LOT like a John Williams filmscore we all very much know. Considering that the Symphony(1947-1952) predates anything Mr. Williams' did "compose", it is no wonder that I find him less and very much less ORIGINAL! There are times in the Symphonies of William Alwyn where I expect Luke Skywalker to jump out the speakers! There were days, in the past, when studios had REAL composers writing original filmscores: Miklos Rozsa, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Malcolm Arnold and so many more. Imagine that the studios in the Soviet Union had Prokofiev and Shostakovitch writing scores. As for today.......well, why bother even bringing that up!

I heartily recommend Korngold's glorious Symphony. The recording on the Chandos label is both out of this world and remarkably inexpensive!

"The Belles of St. Trinians"....a great silver screen classic!

Malcolm Arnold wrote serious classics, but did enjoy being quite a joker when it came to the Hoffnung Festival and the "St. Trinian's" movies. Great fun! "The Belles of St. Trinians" should have won an Academy Award!