Reel Love in Symphonic Terms

For those of us who are obsessive attendees of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which closed on Saturday night, Sunday afternoon’s Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS) concert felt like something of a cultural “hair of the dog” proposition. The Symphony’s February program danced to the double theme of Valentine’s Day and continued with the trend of a well-placed movie music program, dubbed “Romantic Hollywood.”

SBS maestro Nir Kabaretti is off in Stockholm, conducting the Royal Swedish Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet, and the podium honors went to a film music specialist, Richard Kaufman. His résumé includes music supervision work in Hollywood and links to the Chicago Symphony’s “CSO at the Movies” series and the Boston Pops, among others.

He knows his stuff, in terms of Hollywood music archives and the art of orchestra-tending in the pop/movie music subculture. Adding to the specialness of the programming occasion, this orchestra is well-stocked with LA-based musicians who have worked in the studios where Hollywood movie scores come to life. The band easily soared on generally simple material that posed no particular challenge compared to standard classical fare.

For this program, Kaufman assembled a cross-historical tapestry, or grab bag, of film music pieces — 20 of them to be exact. In some sense, the scattered selection added up to a distracted jukebox effect, where some more focused and longer pieces might have provided substance. For instance, it could’ve been instructive to follow up Nina Rota’s Godfather theme with something from Rota’s famed relationship with the Fellini filmography. 

But we digress and extend beyond the critic’s role as an observer. 

To be fair, this sampling of musical tidbits and significant film composers did include a suite, albeit a compact one, from Max Steiner’s score for Casablanca. From other corners of the film composer pantheon of note, the concert opened with Ennio Morricone’s fanfare-ish piece for The Untouchables. It touched on John Barry (Out of Africa), Dimitri Tiomkin (Friendly Persuasion, The Old Man and the Sea), Alex North’s iconic “Unchained Melody” (original from Unchained, and later repurposed in Ghost), and Maurice Jarre (Dr. Zhivago).

John Morris’ cartoonishly arch music from Young Frankenstein had the double duty as a framework for a standout solo by first violinist Elizabeth Hedman.  But wait, no Bernard Herrmann, widely regarded as one of the greatest and deepest composers in Hollywood? Maybe something from a cool-headed Hitchcock thriller or his final score, for Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, would stretch the romantic mandate a bit far. Then again, Rota’s Godfather theme, however timelessly endearing, can trigger memories of both themes of passion and visions of horse heads in the bed. Guest accordionist Gee Rabe’s supple lead helped fend off bloodier impressions.

Interestingly, Hollywood music pillar John Williams was represented not by his “greatest hits” and Spielberg-connected music — refreshingly — but by sounds from the margins of his filmography. Kaufman chose a rather bland piece from Witches of Eastwick for a personal reason, having been hired to teach Jack Nicholson to mimic playing the violin and piano in the film (those are Kaufman’s own hands on the piano, intercut into the film). The song “If We Were in Love,” with music by Williams and lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman, was one of the redeeming virtues of the commercial and critical bomb Yes, Giorgio, starring Luciano Pavarotti, whose acting was apparently not a redeeming virtue.

For more contemporary fare from Hollywood, the program only zoomed up as far as 2003, with Klaus Badelt’s score for Pirates of the Caribbean. Another post-Golden age score capped off the official portion of the program, with still-busy journeyman composer Marc Shaiman’s “Tango,” from the 1993 Addams Family Values, featuring Gee waxing Argentinian on accordion. 

Come encore time, another family connection was ushered in, in the form of Eliot Daniel’s instantly recognizable and lovable theme from TV’s I Love Lucy. On a musical note, the tune’s fluid melodic lines are tickled by racing xylophone lines, percolating in the background — a touch of musician-turned-actor Desi Arnaz’s influential Latin musical pedigree.  

And as a final, logical landing place, the orchestra laid into the lushly romantic music from the unapologetic romantic 1958 film An Affair to Remember. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr would, we think, approve.

In other SBS news, as a sign of the orchestra’s upward mobility, recordings of past concerts have been made available nationwide via broadcasts on KUSC (a k a “Classical California,” 88.7 FM in Santa Barbara, link) and streaming on Saturday nights in February. 

For more information, see thesymphony.org