Program Notes

Georges Bizet  (1838 – 1875) died only three months after the premiere of “Carmen” convinced that it was a failure. Not so many years later it was the most-often performed opera in the international repertoire, and for the better part of a century this music has been popular far beyond the lyric theatre.

In our own time the Bizet masterpiece has been tranmogrified as a musical (Carmen Jones) as a ballet (by the Soviet avante-garde composer Rodion Shchedrin) not to mention Tin Pan Alley songwriters, jazz instrumentalists, bathroom baritones and even rock groups.

Pablo Martin Meliton Sarasate y Navascuez (1844 – 1908) seems to have been the first to discern a specifically violinistic character in “Carmen.” He wove a virtuosic if somewhat patchy fantasy for violin and piano (Op. 25) out of themes from the opera, and later expanded his potpourri into a concert piece for violin and orchestra – though more than one reference book quite incorrectly ascribes this orchestral version to the Silesian-born American composer and conductor Franz Waxman (1906 – 1967).

Waxman did, in fact, compose the very different “Carmen” Fantasie. This work is not at all related to the Sarasate hodgepodge. Waxman hardly could have brought himself to rearranging what was already a hybrid composition at least once removed from the original. Instead, properly he bypassed Sarasate and went back to Bizet.

Franz Waxman “created” his “Carmen” and “Tristan & Isolde” Fantasies for the film Humoresque (Warner Brothers, 1947) for John Garfield to “play” on screen to Isaac Stern’s recording on the soundtrack. Jascha Heifetz saw the Joan Crawford – Oscar Levant melodrama with a screenplay by Clifford Odets based on the famous Fannie Hurst story about the budding career of a young New York violinist (Garfield) and his patron (Crawford). The Jerry Wald production was directed by Jean Negulesco.

Heifetz asked Waxman to expand the work for him to play on the popular radio program, The Bell Telephone Hour. The composer revised the score between August 13 and October 18, 1946. The premiere performance of September 9, 1946 was a great success and Heifetz toured the world playing “Carmen” Fantasie. He recorded it with Donald Voorhees on November 11, 1946 and the recording has never been out-of-print.

The Russian violinist David Oistrakh gave the Heifetz recording to his student Leonid Kogan. Unable to obtain a score for the work in the Soviet Union, Kogan made up his own score by listening to the Heifetz recording and copying the notes down one-by-one! Waxman was the first American to conduct the major orchestras of the USSR (in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev) and during his April 1962 visit he promised to send the orchestral parts to Kogan for a recording with Kirill Kondrashin. Shortly after its release Kondrashin defected to the West and most of his Russian recordings were destroyed. Kogan taught Viktoria Mullova the work before she fled (with the music on microfilm) from the USSR in 1982. Another Kogan pupil Andrei Korsakov (1946 – 1991) recorded “Carmen” in 1990.

“Carmen” Fantasie is Waxman’s most requested concert work and the post-Heifetz generation of violinists has championed the music on every continent.

Maxim Vengerov and Sayaka Shoji have recorded the composition with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic, as did Igor Oistrakh, Andrei Korsakov, Louis Francini, Rachel Barton, Chloe Hanslip, Lara St. John, Mayuko Kamio, Alexander Gilman, Rachel Kolly D’Alba and Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg.  Performed several times by John Williams/Keith Lockhart and the Boston “Pops”, with Tamara Smirnova, Zubin Mehta and Glenn Dicterow with the New York Philharmonic featured the work on the PBS telecast “Live From Lincoln Center.” The Gorky-born (1977) trumpet virtuoso Sergei Nakariakov “Carmen” Fantasie CD was a sensation. Rodney Mack recorded the Trumpet “Carmen” with Lawrence Foster conducting the Orquestra Sinfonica de Barcelona I National de Catalunya. On February 4, 1998 Paul Merkelo gave the first concert performance with the New World Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tillson Thomas at Lincoln Center. “Carmen” Fantasie for viola, strings and percussion is arranged by Michael Kugel. Marina Piccinini premiered the flue edition, DaXun Zhang the edition for double bass and Matt Haimovitz recently performed the work for cello. There are also editions for concert band, marimba, tuba, violin/piano.

Franz Waxman is best known for the 150+ film scores he composed in Hollywood beginning at Universal Pictures in 1935 with The Bride of Frankenstein. During his Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer period (1936 – 1942), he wrote the music for The Philadelphia Story and seven Spencer Tracy films including Captains Courageous and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Of the four scores for Alfred Hitchcock films, Rebecca is unforgettable. While at Warner Brothers (1943 – 1948), he composed the music for a variety of films; Objective, Burma!, The Two Mrs. Carrolls and Mr. Skeffington. Moving to Paramount Pictures, he won his first Academy Award in 1950 with Sunset Boulevard and his second the next year with A Place in the Sun. Other memorable scores from the 1950ís include Prince Valiant, Crime in the Streets, Peyton Place, Sayonara and The Nun’s Story. In the 1960ís he is best known for the music to Adventures of a Young Man and Taras Bulba.

Waxman’s versatility as a composer led him to a variety of concert works as varied as his film scores: “Athaneal The Trumpeter” Overture (1946), “The Charm Bracelet” For Chamber Orchestra (1949), “Passacaglia” For Orchestra (1953), “Sinfonietta” For String Orchestra & Timpani (1956), “The Spirit of St. Louis” Symphonic Suite (1958), “The Black-Foxe” March For Concert Band (1958), “Joshua,” an Oratorio (1959), “Goyana”: Four Sketches For Piano Solo Percussion  & String Orchestra (1960), “Ruth”: A Narrative Poem With Music (1960), “The Ride of the Cossacks” For Orchestra (1962), “Hemingway”: A Symphonic Suite (1963) and “The Song of Terezin” A Dramatic Song Cycle (1965).

Waxman was exceptionally skilled in orchestration, and his ability to exploit every coloristic resource adds an extra measure of zest to this artful mingling of showpiece and synthesis – that, a fidelity to the essence of “Carmen” that could be expected only in such a sincere homage from one composer to another.