Where have the scores gone?

VIRGINIA BEACH

THE CONCERT HALL and the movie theater have long been uneasy suitors - always flirting with each other but never quite getting to the altar. Things change, at least for one performance, when Symphonicity takes on a program of movie music Sunday.

David Kunkel, music director and conductor of the symphony formerly known as the Symphony Orchestra of Virginia Beach, chose the music and points out that "the world of classic music owes a great deal to the movies. For the vast majority of people all over the world, the first symphony orchestra they heard was at the movies."

Long ago, every Hollywood studio financed its own, full-time symphony orchestra as well as in-house composers. During the 1940s, as World War II raged and was resolved, some of the best composers in the world flocked to Hollywood, where they found work that paid better than any concert hall. Those times no longer exist.

For awhile, there was an effort to fashion a hit pop song as the "theme" of each movie. Some of these themes became more popular than the movies that carried them, such as "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing" (1955) and "Three Coins in the Fountain" (1954), and the instrumentals "Ruby," from "Ruby Gentry," and "Theme from A Summer Place" (1959).

In the 1970s, a trend took hold in which standard pop tunes were used as background music rather than a symphonic score.

"The Graduate" (1967) was perhaps a leader in this. Even though "Mrs. Robinson" was a character in "The Graduate" and is mentioned in the song's lyrics, by Simon and Garfunkel, the song was not written for the movie and had nothing to do with the plot.

In recent films, the trend has reached commercial extremes, as the unrelated musical background is merely a collection of pop tunes seemingly chosen to sell a soundtrack album - as if someone had left a radio playing in the background.

The symphony tradition has been revived largely by John Williams, who holds the record for the most Oscars won by any living person. (With 45 Oscar nominations he is tied with fellow composer Alfred Newman as second only to the champion of nominations - Walt Disney.) Williams' music for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" returns to theaters Thursday, when the latest in the action series opens, and just might turn up as a part of the Sandler event.

The most recent Oscar winners in the Original Score category have included serviceable scores such as "The Red Violin," "Life is Beautiful," "The English Patient" and "Il Postino." Not good enough to make my list of favorites, although recent scores from "Atonement" and "Brokeback Mountain" did.

On many occasions, music from the film world seems right at home in a concert hall. Miklos Rozsa's "Spellbound Concerto" is played in concert halls, from the 1945 suspense film that starred Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. "The Lord of the Rings" score has made it to concert halls. The march of the Aztec Indians from "Captain from Castile" (1947), which starred Tyrone Power and Jean Peters, is a favorite overture for orchestras. Countless symphonic suites have been fashioned from movie themes.

Kunkel has chosen, among others, Leonard Bernstein's score for "On the Waterfront" (1954), Max Steiner's Tara's Theme from "Gone With the Wind," Maurice Jarre's Lara's Theme from "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) and Ernest Gold's theme from "Exodus" (1960).

Dimitri Tiomkin, the Russian emigrant to Hollywood who specialized in Western themes, got a big laugh when he accepted his Oscar for "High Noon" (1952) by thanking Beethoven, Brahms and Bach. The thanks were perhaps more fitting than the audience realized.

The local symphony adds the full-blooded orchestrations of classic Hollywood to the mix. We've missed it in movie theaters.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com.