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Love Story: Piano Themes from Cinema’s Golden Age

Love Story: Piano Themes from Cinema’s Golden Age—Valentina Lisitsa, piano; BBC Concert Orchestra/Christopher Warren-Green & Gavin Sutherland (Decca 4789454)

On her website, Valentina Lisitsa bills herself as “The Queen of Rachmaninoff.”  That happens to be of pinpoint relevance for this 2016 Decca release, since nearly all the selections in the program—especially those from the 1940s and 1950s—were composed in a style that aspires to the over-the-top Romanticism of the famous Russian. Take for instance the most familiar piece on the disc.  When the producers of Dangerous Moonlight, the 1941 film for which the Warsaw Concerto was written, decided not to secure the rights for Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto, they approached composer Richard Addinsell for something in a similar vein. Audiences have since forgotten the movie, but over the years, there have been more than a hundred recordings of the Warsaw Concerto. Similar works by Hubert Bath ( Cornish Rhapsody), Charles Williams ( Jealous Lover & The Dream of Olwen) and Jack Beaver ( Portrait of Isla) pop up in this album along with more modern pieces by Richard Rodney Bennett, Dave Grusin and Carl Davis. A must for film music fans!