Music Album Review: 'Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age'

Cover  Design: Giulio Turturro; Cover Photo: Edward Steichen. (C) 1999 Sony Masterworks/Sony Classical

On July 27, 1999, nearly two years after the successful debut of Cinema Serenade, Sony Masterworks dropped Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age, an album that reunited virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman and conductor John Williams for a 12-track collection of movie themes – or songs used in movies – during the Golden Age of Hollywood. For this sequel, Perlman and Williams are joined by “America’s Orchestra”: the Boston Pops, which Maestro Williams led from 1980 to 1993 and still serves today as the ensemble’s Laureate Conductor. 

In contrast to their first album since their collaboration on Schindler’s List, Perlman and Williams chose a program of compositions heard in films released between 1936 (Smile from Modern Times) and 1952 (the traditional Irish gig St. Patrick’s Day from The Quiet Man). 

They chose wisely, for as the liner notes by Royal S. Brown point out, “the Hollywood music track has also spawned more than its share of lush, well-developed melodies, some of them so catchy that they went on to acquire a life of their own as pop songs. These ‘big themes’ particularly characterized what is now considered to be the ‘golden age’ of movie music – scores mostly from the ‘30s and ‘40s written by such composers as Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold – and it is to this golden age in the art of film scoring that this second Cinema Serenade recording is devoted.”

Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age features 11 new arrangements – especially constructed to match Itzhak Perlman’s performing style by Maestro Williams or Boston Pops arranger Angela Morley. The 12^th arrangement – for William Walton’s Touch Her Soft Lips and Part from 1944’s Henry V – is by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, an English composer of film scores and classical music who, like Maestro Williams, was also a jazz pianist and music arranger until his death in New York City on December 24, 2012. As a result, the performances of certain themes, such as Max Steiner’s Tara’s Theme from Gone With the Wind or David Raskin’s Laura, are markedly different from those heard in other Boston Pops Orchestra recordings made with either Maestro Williams or his predecessor, the late Arthur Fiedler.

Track List

1. Laura  (David Raskin) 3:12

2. Now, Voyager (Max Steiner) 5:04

3. Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin) 3:39

4.  Lost Weekend (Miklos Rosza) 4:18

5. The Quiet Man (Traditional) 2:17

6. The Adventures of Robin Hood (Erich Wolfgang Korngold) 4:04

7. Casablanca (Herman Hupfeld) 4:18

8. Henry V (William Walton) 3:58

9. The Uninvited (Victor Young) 5:09

10. My Foolish Heart (Victor Young) 3:43

11. Gone with the Wind (Max Steiner) 3:33

12. Wuthering Heights (Alfred Newman) 3:42

Total Album Time: 46:57

My Take

After being enchanted by Sony Masterworks’ earlier Cinema Serenade recording in 1997, I knew that I was not going to be disappointed by its sequel, Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age.

Now, I must admit that I haven’t watched a lot of the films represented in this album. I own three of the 12 movies whose themes are performed by Perlman, the Boston Pops Orchestra, and Maestro Williams – The Adventures of Robin Hood, Gone with the Wind, and Casablanca – but have yet to watch, say, Now, Voyager or My Foolish Heart. Even though my tastes have broadened somewhat over the past 40 years, the melodramas of the 1930s and ‘40s don’t draw me in as much as, say, an action film or even a comedy of more recent vintage. 

Be that as it may, the music in Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age is simply fabulous. The melodies are, as Royal Brown writes in his liner notes, lush and full, with swirls of musical shading that shift from brooding and melancholic to ebullient, then back to reflective or romantic.  At least three of the themes in this album – Laura, Smile, and My Foolish Heart – became popular songs in their own right, while a fourth – Herman Hupfeld’s As Time Goes By – reversed the trend.

When Casablanca was made, and the scriptwriters wrote the script in 1942, As Time Goes By had already been a modest hit in 1931. Much to the displeasure of composer Max Steiner, the Epstein Twins and Hal Wallis incorporated the song into the story. Steiner hated the song and wanted to re-score the movie, even though Ingrid Bergman was now working on For Whom the Bell Tolls and had already cut her hair for her role in that film. Because the process of replacing the score necessitated expensive rewrites and reshoots, Wallis balked at the notion. When he was told that Bergman’s hair was too short for the reshoots anyway, he stood his ground, and As Time Goes By stayed in Casablanca.    

As I said earlier, 11 of the 12 themes were arranged by Maestro Williams and Angela Morley for this album. All of them are brilliantly done, but my favorite is the Williams-arranged version of As Time Goes By. Itzhak Perlman plays the violin solos with poignant emotion that evokes the sentimentality of Casablanca and even tops the Steiner orchestration heard in the film.

This was a fantastic sequel to a great album of film music, and it is still in print nearly 20 years after its original release. So if you love film scores or great symphonic music, get your hands on Cinema Serenade 2: The Golden Age. You’ll be glad you did.