Dimitri Tiomkin (1894-1979)
A President's Country (1966) As a student at the St Petersburg Conservatoire - where he was taught by Alexander Glazunov and Sergei Prokofiev was a fellow pupil - Dimitri Tiomkin couldn't have realised that he was destined to become one of cinema's most renowned creators of melody - and, indeed, one of Hollywood's most successful songwriters. While the Conservatoire scrupulously drilled Tiomkin in composition, he essentially concentrated his studies on the piano, under the expert tutelage of Felix Blumenfeld. He emerged a pianist of some distinction, with international engagements, even giving a recital at Carnegie Hall, and in Paris in 1928 he performed the European premiere of Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F major. It was Tiomkin's first wife, Albertina Rasch, who precipitated Tiomkin's introduction to Hollywood and film music. The head of a dance company, Albertina was invited to create the choreography for a series of brief ballet films - and inevitably Tiomkin was requested to provide the music for a number of these shorts. Prize commissions followed - including Alice in Wonderland and two classic dramas directed by Frank Capra: Lost Horizon and Mr Smith Goes to Washington. When America entered the Second World War, Tiomkin was attached to the Army Film Centre along with Capra and spent much of the duration scoring military and patriotic documentaries. With the cessation of hostilities, he became one of Hollywood's most prolific composers - scoring It's a Wonderful Life, Cyrano de Bergerac, Strangers on a Train and The Thing from Another World among a host of prominent films. But it was Tiomkin's radical adoption of a theme song for High Noon in 1950 that created the musical precedent for a decade or so of Hollywood films and set the seal on Tiomkin's success. Title songs became practically mandatory - and few possessed Tiomkin's melodic and dramatic grasp of the new imperative. Blowing Wild, The High and the Mighty, Friendly Persuasion, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Wild Is the Wind, Rio Bravo and 'The Green Leaves of Summer' from The Alamo all attest to Tiomkin's prowess with melody. Other monumental scores from Tiomkin include Dial M for Murder, Giant, Land of the Pharaohs, The Old Man and the Sea, The Guns of Navarone, 55 Days at Peking and The Fall of the Roman Empire. Latterly Tiomkin also turned his talents to producing - initially with the epic Gregory Peck western MacKenna's Gold, and finally returning to his native Russia to helm the biographical drama Tchaikovsky. It seems surprising that a Russian composer should come to dominate the scoring of Hollywood Westerns - but this is what Tiomkin achieved. He had an instinct for quasi-folk tunes and a gift for expansive melody that effortlessly alluded to the great outdoors, plus a primitiveness, a honed vulgarity even, that evoked raw pioneering spirit and gritty endeavour. A number of themes from some of Tiomkin's most remembered Western scores were usefully gathered together by the composer for his music to the 1966 documentary film A President's Country, a mosey around south-west Texas, home of the then-President of the USA, Lyndon B. Johnson. The wide-open vistas, undulating oceans of cattle and Gregory Peck's narration were herded and sometimes stampeded along by a handy retrospective of Tiomkin's trademark Western themes. In succession, we hear melodies from Red River, Giant and Duel in the Sun, music from the television series Rawhide, then the theme from High Noon, taking in 'The Green Leaves of Summer' from The Alamo before revisiting the opening motif from Red River. With the exception of the raucous Rawhide, the various themes are not represented in their original guises, but are each here given a more pastoral ambience, as if prairie winds were wafting through these melodies, taming any undue frontier roughness. Programme note by David Wishart © BBC
|