THE CD PLAYER PLUS - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Yes, that Dick Hyman, the jazz pianist
and swing bandleader you may know
for his several albums for Reference
Recordings. In the early 60’s he actually
composed music for a number of Shakespeare’s
songs and sonnets (he repeated
the exploit a few years later, though with
less good results). The songs were sung
by the wonderful operetta baritone Earl
Wrightson, whose heroic golden tones
bring this superb music to life.
The mood shifts from song to song,
no doubt as the Bard intended. Hyman
wrote a robust, rollicking tune for It Was
a Lover and his Lass, drawn from As You
Like It. From Measure for Measure, the
song Take, O Take Those Lips Away is a
wistful ballad. Who is Sylvia from Two
Gentlemen of Verona is set to a soaring
melody entirely worthy of this oftquoted
song.
As for Wrightson, his name was once
a household word. He was a popular
radio star back when radio had live talent
before its microphones, and was often
seen on early television, singing songs
from operettas and musical comedies.
He starred in road show versions of Kiss
Me Kate, Man of La Mancha, Fiddler on the
Roof, and many others, His unique voice
was perfectly suited to Dick Hyman’s
evocative music, and of course Shakespeare’s
immortal poetry.
The CD however includes a second
complete album, titled A Night With
Rudolf Friml. Friml was a Viennese composer
who made his career in the United
States composing popular operettas.
Though some of the songs sound risible
today (Rose Marie and Indian Love Call,
sung with his long-time companion Lois
Hunt, are but two examples), some of the
songs still pack a punch. Listen to the
opening number, The Song of the Vagabonds,
a showstopper that would surely
have drawn an ovation. Also memorable
is the familiar Donkey Serenade. Though
it has often been done, surely no one has
ever sung it like Earl Wrightson.
I actually have this recording on a
pretty good stereo LP, and I was pleased
to find that the transfer to digital preserves
the richness and power of the
original, without annoying artifacts.
Getting these two superb albums on
one CD is an unexpected find.
Z
Yves Montand
Christal Films 50660
Rejskind: This year is billed as the 40th
anniversary of this landmark film, the
greatest political thriller of all time,
but in fact I first saw it in 1968, when it
existed only in its original French version.
I attended a weeknight late show,
with less than half the theatre full.
When it was over, there was an ovation
so intense and extended you would have
thought director Costa-Gavras had been
present. On DVD, Z has lost none of
its power.
The plot line will seem disquietingly
familiar. In an unnamed country (actually
Greece, as Costa-Gavras reveals in
sly hints), an energetic young left-wing
parliamentarian (Yves Montand) is
campaigning for an election he appears
poised to win. He is anti-military and
especially anti-NATO, underlining that
each time a cannon is fired an amount
equivalent to a teacher’s annual salary
goes up in smoke. Not surprisingly, he
makes powerful enemies. Following a
political rally, he dies in what is initially
billed as a banal traffic accident, and then
as a killing by two anti-social losers with
radical political connections…acting
independently, of course!
To put this into perspective, I saw Z
a mere three months after the assassination
of Robert Kennedy by an anti-social
loser acting “independently.” Like many,
I did not then subscribe to the hypothesis
of a high-level conspiracy in the murder
of either Bobby or JFK. Such a plot
would be too complex, too many people
would have to be in on it, the secret
couldn’t possibly be kept. The genius
of Z is that it demonstrates how such a
conspiracy would work. I emerged from
the cinema shaken, convinced that the
US had undergone not one but two coup
d’états in a single decade.
However there is more to Z than its
story. Costa-Gavras, working on a small
budget (some of it donated by one of his
actors), did nothing less than reinvent
cinema. The conspiracy is complex, and
telling its story conventionally would
have resulted in a very long film whose
details would have been difficult to grasp,
as they are in such later political films as
JFK and All the President’s Men. Costa-
Gavras telescoped his story into less than
two hours by using editing techniques
they warn against in film schools, such
as jump cuts. Backstory is provided in
flashbacks that last mere seconds, with
little or no dialog. Amazingly it works,
and you always know what is going on.
The story is relentless in its intensity,
but with a mixture of humor and tension
that points to one of the director’s major
influences, Alfred Hitchcock.
This telescoping of the story results
in great economy. After I had seen the
film a second time (four days later), I
realized that, in this dense and “talky,”
scenario, there is not a word wasted.
What seem like casual comments have
deeper meaning, sometimes ironic,
sometimes chilling. Even in the scene
before the main titles, which depicts
a boring lecture on agriculture, you
shouldn’t miss a word. You should also
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 73
Software
Feedback