Overture to Frankenstein: The Movie Score

My Second Symphony is a work of absolute music. It has no subtext; it tells no “story”; it just is. I had always wished to write a four-movement symphony, containing a serious first movement, a scherzo, a lyrical slow movement, and a set of variations concluding hopefully in transcendence. Working in 2010 with Maestra Marin Alsop and the virtuosic Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (for the California premiere of my Roller Coaster) provided inspiration to open my symphonic veins further, write a large work for large orchestra, and out came this purely instrumental symphony (my first, Symphony Pomes Penyeach, is a song cycle). The Second Symphony is scored for full orchestra including the usual complement of winds, brass, percussion, and strings, but adding alto flute and English horn for their special pungency. Its premiere reading with The Chappaqua Orchestra in the United States was immediately followed by this recording in July, 2015 with the miraculous City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at CBSO Centre in Birmingham, UK. The recording sessions with these great musicians confirmed the sounds, textures, timbres, rhythms, and, yes, emotions I intended to impart when I wrote the work. It is preserved now for listeners to hear, and, I trust, be moved by – a symphony in four movements for orchestra, plain and simple, colorful and complex, a work that is absolutely what it is. The symphony is dedicated to Marjorie Perlin.

Frankenstein-The Movie Score is my most performed orchestral work, usually produced around Halloween. Existing in three versions (for full orchestra, chamber orchestra, and wind ensemble), the score is designed to be played simultaneously with the classic 1931 talkie starring Colin Clive and Boris Karloff and directed by James Whale. Although the movie has sound, Frankenstein has no film score as the technology did not then exist for a second music track to be embedded on celluloid (until King Kong in 1933 had its through composed film score). Frankenstein-The Movie Score is a 70-minute symphonic film score composed as if it were a one-act opera, commenting on the drama and propelling it to a terrifying and tragic conclusion. Performed before the film starts, the overture bows to tradition and incorporates themes from the movie score into a compressed frame that is aimed to thrust viewers into the horrifying tale.

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Sir Edward Elgar conducted the inaugural concert of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in November, 1920. Over the nine decades since, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) has grown into a 90-piece ensemble with a worldwide reputation.