Composer: Miklós Rózsa
- Suite from "The Thief of Bagdad"
- Suite from "Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book"
- Suite from "Sahara"
- Suite from "Ben-Hur"
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Rumon Gamba, conductor
Date: 2014
Label: Chandos
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Miklós Rózsa’s name is so indelibly linked to historical widescreen epics such as Ben Hur (1959) that it’s a pleasure to be reminded of his earlier work, with its links to the Korda family, his fellow Hungarians, and the producers of his earlier work, including The Thief of Bagdad (1940) and Jungle Book (1942). In these magical pieces set in distant lands that we once called the Orient, Rózsa exhibits a lightness of touch and tuneful simplicity that he never quite managed to recapture in his later work. Far removed from the brazen empirical fanfares of Ben Hur and ancient Rome, his music for The Thief of Bagdad dances along in a kaleidoscopic whirl of instrumental colours, from the winding-up of the Sultan’s toys to a jaunty ‘Flying Horse Gallop’; then moving on to the seductive ‘Silvermaid’s Dance’. In Jungle Book, the characters and animals, each with their own theme and identification with a particular instrument, spring to life in the manner of Peter and the Wolf. A nocturnal jungle scene and a fierce stampede add further contrasts to this appealing work.
The musicologist Christopher Palmer constructed the succinct Suite from the film Sahara (1943), a gritty drama of man’s heroism in the blazing heat of the North African desert, where the music reflects the inhospitable terrain as well as the welcome sounds of water at an oasis (2'25" into the ‘Beginning’). The Suite from Ben Hur, an Academy Award-winner that chalked up a run of 122 weeks on its initial London engagement, includes many of the film’s most iconic moments: ‘The Rowing of the Galley Slaves’, ‘Parade of Charioteers’ and, of course, that richly endowed Prelude. These performances by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Rumon Gamba, who have many a cinematic credit to their name, carry the conviction of an original soundtrack recording in state-of the-art sound.
— Adrian Edwards
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Miklós Rózsa (April 18, 1907 – July 27, 1995) was a Hungarian-American composer, best known for his nearly one hundred film scores. Born in Budapest, he studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and achieved early success with both concert and film music. The latter brought him to Hollywood, and Rózsa remained in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1946. During his Hollywood career, he received three Oscars for Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1947), and Ben-Hur (1959), while his concert works were championed by such major artists as Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, and János Starker.
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Rumon Gamba (born 24 November 1972) is a British conductor. He studied music at Durham University, and then went to the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 1998, he joined the BBC Philharmonic as its Assistant Conductor, and later became Associate Conductor. He left the orchestra in 2002. Gamba was Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra from 2002 to 2010, and chief conductor of the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra from 2011 to 2015. In January 2022, Gamba became chief conductor of the Oulu Symphony Orchestra. He has made over 50 CDs of for the Chandos Records label.
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