Program Notes

The 1938 Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ production of the Dickensian classic A Christmas Carol starring Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge was directed by Edwin L. Marin for MGM. The fifty-minute score contains ten themes incorporated into twenty-three orchestral numbers and seven choral selections. Waxman had to whip all of them Into shape within five days! The recording session began at five in the afternoon and ended at nine the following morning. The composer noted: “High pressure has no ill effect on the inspiration but it’s pretty hard on the body”.

Franz Waxman led a variety of musical lives as composer, conductor and impresario. He was born in Konigshutte, Upper Silesia, Germany (now Chorzow, Poland) on December 24, 1906; Waxman started piano lessons at the age of six and went on to advanced musical studies in Dresden and Berlin.

Waxman began his professional film career in Berlin by orchestrating the musical score for The Blue Angel. In 1934, he came to the United States and for the next thirty-two years composed and conducted 144 motion pictures scores in Hollywood; he was nominated for the Academy Award 10 times and won twice-in-a-row  – Sunset Boulevard in 1950 and A Place In The Sun in 1951. Waxman’s other most memorable scores are The Bride Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Rebecca, Objective, Burma!, Prince Valiant, Crime In The Streets, Sayonara, Peyton Place, The Nun’s Story and Taras Bulba.

For the film Humoresque, he wrote a special piece based on themes from Bizet’s opera Carmen, which was played by Issac Stern on the soundtrack. The Carmen Fantasie has become standard repertoire and was recorded by Heifetz, Stern and Kogan. Among Waxman’s other concert works are Overture For Trumpet & Orchestra, Rhapsody For Piano & Orchestra, Goyanna: Four Sketches For Piano Solo Percussion & String Orchestra, The Charm Bracelet For Chamber Orchestra, The Black-Foxe March, a dramatic song cycle, The Song Of Terezin, an oratorio, Joshua and the symphonic suites, The Spirit Of St. Louis, Hemingway and Ruth.

In 1947, Waxman founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival and for the next twenty years presented 70 World, American and West Coast premieres by such composers as Bernstein, Foss, Harris, Honegger, Mahler, Mennin, Orff, Piston, Poulenc, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Vaughn Williams and Walton.

Franz Waxman frequently guest-conducted orchestras in the United States, Europe, Israel and was chosen to be the first American, as part of the cultural exchange program, to conduct the major orchestras of the Soviet Union. He died on February 24, 1967 in Los Angeles, California.

On September 19, 1999, at the Hollywood Bowl, the United States Postal Service released Legends of American Music – Hollywood Composers stamps honoring: Bernard Herrmann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin and Franz Waxman®.

The Musuem of Modern Art (MoMA), in New York, honors renowned film score composer Franz Waxman® with a 21-title retrospective on the centenary of his birth December/January 2006/2007.