Four Centuries of Great Music March 16, 2025 Concert Music by Film Composers Episode 2

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music is the second episode featuring concert art music by composers we know as film composers.  

Nino Rota 1911–1979
Nino Rota  was born Giovanni Rota Rinaldi on December  3,1911 into a musical family in Milan, Italy.[1] Rota was a renowned child prodigy – his first oratorio, L’infanzia di San Giovanni Battista, was written at age 11 and performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923; his three-act lyrical comedy after Hans Christian Andersen, Il Principe Porcaro, was composed when he was just 13 and published in 1926. He studied at the Milan conservatory and then undertook serious study of composition at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome, graduating in 1930.   Encouraged by Arturo Toscanini, Rota moved to the United States, where he lived from 1930 to 1932 and won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, where he was taught conducting by Fritz Reiner and composition by Rosario Scalero.

He began his composition career of both film scores and concert music after returning to Milan.

Rota wrote over 170 film scores including many of the films of Federico Fellini such as 8½, La Dolce Vita and many more and Luchino Visconti.  But he is most famous in the United States for his film scores to Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet and Francis Ford Coppola’s the Godfather and Godfather 2 movies.  Seeing a trend here?  Italian composer and Italian film directors.  But anyway from the original Godfather movie we have the main title and love theme from The Godfather Original soundtrack recording.

Main title and Love Theme from The Godfather
Nino Rota & Carlo Savina
Single from The Godfather Original soundtrack recording
Geffen Records

But Nino Rota also wrote over 190 works of concert music as well.  Included in that is his Concerto for Harp and Orchestra.  It is in 3 movements: Allegro moderato, Andante and Allegro.  

Nino Rota: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra – I. Allegro moderato
Nino Rota: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra – II. Andante
Nino Rota: Concerto for Harp and Orchestra – III. Allegro

Esther Peristerakis, harp and the WDR Funkhausorchester Köln conducted by  Michael Seal
Nino Rota: Film Music & Concertos
Capriccio Records

James Horner was born on August 14, 1953 in Los Angeles, California.  Shortly after his birth, his parents moved to England.  James Horner began studying piano at the age of five, and trained at the Royal College of Music in London, England, before moving to California in the 1970s. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in music at USC, he would go on to earn his master’s degree at UCLA and teach music theory there. He later completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory at UCLA. Horner began scoring student films for the American Film Institute in the late 1970s,   But he was also a composer of serious, concert or art music.

Collage: A Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra was completed by James Horner in early 2015 and premiered on March 27, 2015, at the Royal Festival Hall in London. The premiere was conducted by Jaime Martín and performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with soloists David Pyatt, John Ryan, James Thatcher, and Richard Watkins.  Collage was Horner’s last completed concert work before his death in June 2015. Horner had previously worked with three of the four horn soloists on his film scores and had himself played the French horn in his youth.  This recording of Collage was made by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the original soloists shortly before Horner’s death, but  was released commercially through Decca Records on September 23, 2016 posthumously.

Here is that performance of James Horner’s Collage: A Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jaime Martín with horn soloists David Pyatt, John Ryan, James Thatcher, and Richard Watkins from the album   James Horner – Collage: The Last Work. Decca Records

James Horner:  Collage: A Concerto for Four Horns and Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jaime Martín with horn soloists David Pyatt, John Ryan, James Thatcher, and Richard Watkins from the album   
James Horner – Collage: The Last Work.
Decca Records

James Horner was of course a very successful film composer as well.  Horner’s first credits as a feature-film composer were for B-movie director and producer Roger Corman with 1979’s The Lady in Red.   Horner’s big break came in 1982 when he was asked to score Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It established him as an A-list Hollywood composer. Director Nicholas Meyer quipped that Horner was hired because the studio could no longer afford the first Trek movie’s composer, Jerry Goldsmith; but that by the time Meyer returned to the franchise with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the studio could not afford Horner either.   In 1987, Horner’s original score for Aliens brought him his first Academy Award nomination.  “Somewhere Out There,” which he co-composed and co-wrote with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil for An American Tail, was also nominated that year for Best Original Song.  Horner’s biggest critical and financial success came in 1997 with his score for James Cameron’s Titanic. At the 70th Academy Awards, Horner received the Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score, and shared the Oscar for Best Original Song with co-writer Will Jennings for “My Heart Will Go On”. The film’s score and song also won three Grammy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.  

Lets open this second hour of today’s Four Centuries of Great Music which is the second episode featuring concert art music by composers we know as film composers with James Horner’s first big break the Main Title from the movie Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan featuring David Elton, trumpet with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Robert Ziegler, conductor and “My Heart Will Go On” from the movie Titanic featuring Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser, cellos with The London Symphony Orchestra, Robin Smith, conductor.  Both of these are tracks from the album James Horner: The Classics. Sony Music

James Horner:  Main Title from Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan
David Elton, trumpet with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Robert Ziegler, conductor
James Horner: The Classics
Sony Music

James Horner:  My Heart Will Go On from Titanic
Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser, cellos with The London Symphony Orchestra, Robin Smith, conductor.
James Horner: The Classics.
Sony Music

We will be concluding today’s second episode of Four Centuries of Great Music featuring concert or art music by composers we know as film composers with the concert and film music of Bernard Herrman.
    
Bernard Herrmann was born in New York in 1911. He studied at New York University with Philip James and Percy Grainger. He later studied at Julliard with Bernard Wagenaar (in a class with Alex North). He spent the last ten years of his life in England, although he returned to America several times for specific projects.  His first film project was Orson Welles Citizen Kane in 1940-41.   He received his first  Academy Award for The Devil and Daniel Webster in 1941.

He pursued a lifelong interest in new and rarely performed music; he was an early champion of Ives and gave the American premieres of many works by English composers.”  He served as conductor and composer for CBS radio in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s (in addition to composing music for 61 films). He appeared as guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Halle Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra, and introduced British audiences to the works of many American composers. Herrmann conducted the American premiere of Milhaud’s La Creation du Monde.

“Herrmann’s position in the history of movie composing seems obvious enough. He represents a bridge between the classicism of Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, and Erich Korngold and the more dissonant styles of Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, and Jerry Goldsmith.  Herrmann is considered by many to be the most important of all American film composers. Composer Miklos Rozsa states “Herrmann was a milestone in the history of films.”

Bernard Herrmann died in 1975 while in Los Angeles to score the music for Taxi Driver he died in his sleep after a conducting session for that soundtrack.

Bernard Herrmann: Symphony No. 1 – I. Maestoso – Allegro
Bernard Herrmann: Symphony No. 1 – II. Scherzo
Bernard Herrmann: Symphony No. 1 – III. Andante Sostenuto
Bernard Herrmann: Symphony No. 1 – IV. Rondo – Finale

James Sedares, Phoenix Symphony
Herrmann: Symphony No. 1, Concerto Macabre
MNRK Music Group

And we will lose with music from the  Bernard Herrmann score to Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Psycho”