A suite at the Movies

This montage from our Podcast Vault revisits a post from September 2, 2011. It can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/ASuiteAtTheMovies

 =====================================================================

A little play on words, as we enjoy a “suite” at the movies – and orchestral suites by composers based on music they wrote for films. Music and film goes back to the days of silent films, where music played a large role in providing desired mood effects, and later in the Musicals of the 1940’s, only to name those. Composers as far back as Camille Saint-Saëns provided film music, and a great number of European composers (most noteworthy here being Franz Waxman and Erich Korngold) moved to Hollywood to score great epic films of the first half of the 20^th century.

Our selections include music by Serge Prokofiev and Sir William Walton, best known for their more “serious” works, as well as George Gershwin (who briefly worked on Hollywood films before his early death in 1937) and Nino Rota and John Williams, who arebest known for their movie work and have been known to dabble in “serious compositions”.

Over the years, we've shared quite a bit of film music, especially from Mr. Williams. As a bonus this week, I thought I would share selections from one of my favourite Williams film scores. He collaborated on dozens of projects with director Steven Spielberg, but this gem isn't a Waxmanesque symphonic score, but rather a throwback to Williams' years as a jazz pianist. It is from the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, which starred Tom Hanks who plays a seasoned FBI agent pursuing Frank Abagnale Jr. ( Leonardo DiCaprio) who, before his 19th birthday, successfully forged millions of dollars' worth of checks while posing as a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, and a legal prosecutor.

The performance is by a Polish  music academy.

I think you will (still) love this music too.