Vienna to Hollywood: Impressions of E.W. Korngold & Max Steiner

From Vienna to Hollywood is versatile drummer Peter Erskine's ardent homage to the (mostly) film music of the renowned Academy Award-winning Viennese composers Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, who wrote some of filmdom's most memorable themes during Hollywood's Golden Age in the decades from 1930 to 1960. To transpose their film scores to the jazz genre, Erskine uses a talented group of performers from Vienna's JAM Music Lab University (where he serves as artist-in-residence), supplanted on two numbers by a masterful string quartet.

Korngold, who came to Hollywood in 1934—five years after Steiner—is best known for his marvelous score for the 1938 Errol Flynn blockbuster, The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner Bros. Pictures), and Erskine raises the curtain with that film's familiar "March of the Merry Men," on which his trustworthy timekeeping is bolstered by earnest solos from pianist Danny Grissett, trumpeter Thomas Gansch and tenor saxophonist Herwig Gradischnig, yeoman work by percussionist Brian Kilgore and some spirited counterpoint. That is the first of five consecutive works by Korngold before Steiner takes the stage with the memorable "Tara's Theme" (followed by "Belle Watling"), both from the Oscar-winning film Gone with the Wind (Selznick and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939).

Preceding that are Korngold's "Sterbelied" (a solo showpiece for Grissett); "Old Spanish Song," whose melody was used in the film The Sea Hawk (Warner Bros., 1940); "The Boys Go to Play" (a lighthearted platform for flutist Bob Sheppard, excised from The Prince and the Pauper, [20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Pictures, 1977]); and the exotic "Concerto Miniature," a theme from the second movement of Korngold's Violin Concerto in D-major, Op. 35, written for the great violinist Jascha Heifetz. The concerto is performed by Judd Miller on EWI and the string quartet comprised of players from the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Bertl Mayer is the harmonica soloist on "Old Spanish Song," while guitarist Andreas Varady and vibraphonist Flip Philipp share the stage with Sheppard on "The Boys."

"Tara's Theme" is given a full jazz makeover, with trim solos by Grissett and Varady reinforced by percussion, hand claps and bongos. "Belle Watling" is similarly served, with gentler solos this time by Varady and Grissett. Steiner's theme from Johnny Belinda (Warner Bros., 1948—for which Jane Wyman won an Academy Award) is bright and refreshing, reinforcing a sunny calypso beat with an awesome solo by Gradischnig and powerful drumming by Erskine. The string quartet returns (with Grissett) for Korngold's String Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 26, which is followed by Steiner's enchanting theme from the film A Summer Place (Warner Bros., 1959) and the brief finale, "Ghost Coda," ably performed by violinist Alyssa Park with special effects courtesy of Miller.

That is a suitable ending for an album that is essentially subdivided between jazz, film themes and chamber music. While Erskine does the best he can to underscore its jazz components, the fact remains that, notable as they are, these are basically movie scores that do not always lend themselves easily to alternate translations. Although the jazz presented here is excellent, it is also sporadic. High marks for that, and needless to say for the music as a whole, as it is never less than exquisite, with or without its jazz facade.