When four film studio musicians formed the Hollywood string quartet at the end of the 1930s, its name was presumed an oxymoron. The exalted rope quartet devotees belittled the sound bands of films, while Studio Heads had the reputation of avoiding classical music.
The musicians spent two intense rehearsal years before dissolving when the war broke out, and the quartet was gathered in 1947 by two of its founders, Felix Slatkin (Concertmaster of 20th Century Fox Studio Orchestra) and his wife, Eleanor Aller (main cellist of the Warner Bros. Study Orchestra). Oxymoron or not, Hollywood produced the first remarkable American string quartet.
Throughout the 1950s, the set made a series of revelation LPs for the Capitol discs that Beethoven's string quartets perform and much more, while joining Frank Sinatra in his classic anti -crush, “Close to you.” Everything that touched the Hollywood rope quartet was distinctive; Each recording is still a classic.
The legacy of the Hollywood string quartet is a celebration of the Hollywood genre and also the manufacture of string quartet. Today, the exceptional Lyris quartet is one of the many outstanding rope quartets that can be heard in the latest box office successes. Another is the new Hollywood rope quartet, which dedicates its four -day summer festival to honor its inspiration while celebrating its 25th anniversary.
The quartet festival began Thursday night and extends until Sunday in San Marino at the Rothenberg Hall in Huntington. The repertoire is taken from the old recordings of the previous group. And the concerts are presented by the eldest son of Slatkin and Aller, who when he was a child fell asleep with his parents and colleagues rehearsing in his living room after dinner.
Director Leonard Slatkin speaks at the new Hollywood string quartet concert at Huntington.
(New Hollywood rope quartet)
The famous director Leonard Slatkin attributes his vociferous musical appetite to his parents, who, he said Thursday, enjoyed the great scores written in this golden age of cinematographic music and also defended the new classical music, as well as the masterpieces of the past. He did not have an opera company in those days, and Slatkin said his parents compared films scores with modern opera scores.
Almost everyone has listened to their parents in one movie or another. Take “Jaws”, which celebrates your 50th anniversary. That is Aller's cello that evokes the Williams' Shark ear worm.
He has undoubtedly listened to the new Hollywood violinists, Tereza Stanislav and Rafael Rishik, Violist Robert Brophy and the Vilonterista Andrew Shulman in some films. IMDB counts only as participating in 522 sound bands. It is also possible that you have heard one or more of the musicians in the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra or the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The new Hollywood rope quartet, from the left: Rafael Rishik, Andrew Shulman, Tereza Stanislav and Robert Brophy.
(Sam Muller)
It is possible that the new Hollywood programming does not cover the range of original quartets, but it is nevertheless a mixed selection of pieces that have stayed on the road, such as the second quartet of borodin strings. The actions of the original quartet and Borodin recording surely caught the attention of the director of Los Angeles, Edwin Lester. In 1953, Lester created and premiered the musical “Kismet”, which adapts parts of the borodin quartet, for the Angels Civil Light Opera, before it became a success on Broadway.
The times have changed and the new Hollywood brings a more robust tone and a more manifest interaction to its effusive interpretation compared to silk and playful Slatkin and Crew, who were all players trained in Russian. The cut “Italian serenade” by Hugo Wolf, who opened the program, was here lush and Italian, while in a album in the early 50s he dance more lightly.
The great work was César Franck's piano quintet. Slatkin said the recording, launched in 1955, was not sold well, probably thanks to Saturnine painting of a composer of the album cover they would recognize. Slatkin also said that his parents were not in love with their performance, but again, he explained that they were temperamentally ready to find failures.
That recording, which presents his uncle, Victor Aller, an elegant pianist, is slow and dominant. Jean-Yves Thibaudet was the right guest in all the senses for the performance of Big Boned in The Huntington. He is a French pianist with a style for German music, very suitable for the score inspired by the Belgian French composer.
Thibaudet is also a resident of Los Angeles for a long time and an especially versatile artist who appears in the new recording of the soundtrack of “Pride & Prejudice” by Dario Marianelli, who heads the Billboard classic and Classic crossing graphics. He and Slatkin also date back to decades, having acted together and becoming such a good friends that the director made pages for him into Franck.
Seeing Slatkin on the 80 -year stage evoked a notable sense of history, which reminds the roots of the musical openness of Los Angeles that their parents represented. On my trip home on Thursday, I could not resist following the route that Albert Einstein would have taken after practicing his violin when he lived a 12 -minute bicycle trip during his Caltech years, the time when Slatkin's parents were making music history in the studies. Like them, Einstein played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (although he invited once not because he was a good violinist but because Einstein was).
The new Hollywood and Thibaudet made no effort to revive the past in Franck's quintet. On the other hand, in his opulence and expressive explosiveness, they showed Hollywood how to produce a new magnificent version.
Meanwhile, Leonard Slatkin, who is a former Musical Director of the Phil at the Hollywood Bowl, returns later this month to the place where his parents met in 1935 in a Hollywood Bowl symphonic competition. It will carry out a July 24 program that includes a recent work of the next generation of Slatkins. His son, Daniel, is a film and television composer.
