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Posted: |
Sep 16, 2016 - 9:05 AM
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By: |
Howard L
(Member)
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from yesterday's (digital) NY Times:--
Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in Mr. Allen’s 1979 film, “Manhattan.” The New York Philharmonic recorded the original soundtrack, and this weekend will perform the score live as the movie is screened.
1979 METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS INC.
The Philharmonic Accompanies ‘Manhattan,’ Just as It Did in 1979
By MICHAEL COOPER
PLENTY of orchestras offer soundtrack karaoke these days, playing the scores of films live as they are screened. But there will be a twist when the New York Philharmonic strikes up the band this weekend for the lush Gershwin score of Woody Allen’s 1979 film, “Manhattan”: Since the Philharmonic recorded the original soundtrack, the performance it re-enacts will be its own.
Irene Breslaw, a viola player who is one of a handful of members of the orchestra who played on the original film, will find herself performing the same parts, on the same instrument, on the same stage as she did at the original recording session, which was held during a February snowstorm with Mr. Allen and his co-star Diane Keaton, listening in the nearly empty hall. A younger colleague, Pascual Martínez Forteza, will inherit the clarinet solo that opens both “Rhapsody in Blue” and the film, which he first saw dubbed in Spanish while growing up in Majorca, Spain.
Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic’s music director, has been preparing for the performances on Friday and Saturday by studying the film and soundtrack, which his parents played on as members of the orchestra. “I distinctly remember when my parents came home from the recording session,” he said in an interview in which he discussed the challenges of bringing the score to life while keeping it in sync with the film.
The feast of Gershwin music, coupled with the elegant black and white cinematography of Gordon Willis, gave “Manhattan” a romanticized vision of New York that came as a tonic in an era of fiscal crisis, Son of Sam killings, and looting during the blackout two years earlier.
Mr. Allen later said that “Manhattan” had been inspired by the music, and particularly by a recording of Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Buffalo Philharmonic in Gershwin overtures. (He liked it so much that he used some of Buffalo’s versions even after the New York Philharmonic had recorded its own.) The instrumental Gershwin tunes serve as a kind of Greek chorus, offering a commentary on the action to anyone familiar with the lyrics or song titles; you know where a romantic encounter is heading as soon as you hear the strains of “But Not for Me.”
The Philharmonic has long been a Gershwin orchestra — it gave the premiere of “An American in Paris” in 1928 — so it was a natural choice for the soundtrack. An internal 1978 memo addressed to “Ladies & Gentlemen of the Orchestra” announcing the project described the film as a “comedy/love affair in and about New York City.”
From left, Diane Keaton, Woody Allen and Zubin Mehta at the recording session for “Manhattan” in 1979.
Bert Bial/New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives
A small group including Mr. Allen and Ms. Keaton gathered in what was then known as Avery Fisher Hall on Feb. 19, 1979, for the recording session as heavy snow blanketed the city, recalled Irwin Tenenbaum, a lawyer for Mr. Allen who was there.
“It was one of those moments when you think, it’s really worth being in the business,” Mr. Tenenbaum said. “To have a private concert by the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta playing Gershwin: What could be better?”
But not everything went smoothly.
“Do you want to know the truth?” Gary Graffman, the concert pianist engaged to play “Rhapsody in Blue” for the film, asked conspiratorially this week in his apartment near Carnegie Hall after pouring a guest a small glass of his homemade tangerine-flavored vodka.
His wife, Naomi, said, “Gary originally told Zubin — well, he promised not to tell.”
But Mr. Graffman said, “It’s so many years ago, I think Zubin would forgive me.”
He went on to explain something that has puzzled sharp-eyed, and sharp-eared, viewers for nearly four decades: While Mr. Graffman plays the “Rhapsody in Blue” piano solo on the “Manhattan” soundtrack album, the film credits another pianist, Paul Jacobs.
It turns out that the snowstorm prevented Mr. Graffman from reaching the session from West Virginia, where he had given a concert the day before. After his flight was canceled, he made it as far as Washington by train, where he was stranded in what The New York Times called the city’s “worst storm in half a century.” So the session went ahead with Mr. Jacobs, the orchestra’s own pianist, whose take was used in the film. A few weeks later Mr. Graffman recorded his piano part separately for the soundtrack album, which went on to sell briskly.
A scene from Woody Allen’s “Manhattan.” Credit Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
It wound up being the last thing Mr. Graffman, now 87, played with two hands. After an injury to his right hand, he led the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, taught pianists including Lang Lang and Yuja Wang, and performed music written for the left hand alone.
Years later Mr. Graffman ran into Mr. Allen, who made a remark about his missing the session. Mrs. Graffman said with a puckish smile that her answer would have been: “Take the money and run.”
The task of reassembling the music for this weekend’s concerts fell to Peter Bernstein, the composer and orchestrator whose father was the Academy Award-winning film composer Elmer Bernstein. After the Philharmonic sent him music that had been sitting in a box in its library, he discovered that the scores did not always match what was onscreen. So he began assembling the missing pieces — getting the Don Rose arrangements Buffalo had used, transcribing solos that the jazz pianist Dick Hyman had played with smaller combos, and figuring out how to notate changes in dynamics and fade-outs that were introduced when the film was edited.
“It was really a bit of very fun musical archaeology,” he said.
At the performances this weekend Mr. Gilbert will have a special monitor at his podium showing the film with a time clock in the upper left corner, a measure counter in the upper right corner, and visual cues to signal tempo shifts or abrupt fade-outs. He said that “Manhattan” used music more subtly than Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which he conducted in 2013.
“There, it was a very obvious challenge to hit the music cue when the spaceship shows above the horizon,” he said.
For Ms. Breslaw, the viola player reprising her role on the original recording, the concerts will be a swan song of sorts: After the concerts she is retiring from the orchestra, which she has played in for 40 years.
“I was so fond of the experience,” she said, “it will make it a little easier to say goodbye.”
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