Customer Reviews

Waxman: Joshua

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Franz Waxman was already an experienced film composer when he arrived in Hollywood, escaping from the Third Reich, and he had background in various kinds of popular music that certainly helped him become one of the most notable, inventive and skilled film composers of all time. His concert music has not been entirely neglected, but focus has mainly (though with exceptions, such as the song cycle The Song of Terezin) been on his lighter works. The oratorio Joshua was written in memory of his wife and is a substantial work. Stylistically, well, we have a Hollywood composer writing music for a Biblical epic in 1959. The style is more or less what you would suspect from that and despite its qualities one wonders whether Waxman would have produced something more interesting and original if he had completed his opera "Mr. Jekyll", which he laid aside to compose Joshua and never got around to finishing.

Joshua is in many ways an impressive score; it does involve a fair share of epic grandeur, but Waxman avoids any hint of banality - in fact, he is most impressive in the more subtle passages (though the style is that of a Biblical epic, it is interesting how understated the music in general is). The music is melodic, lacking any really memorable tunes but containing many notable passages. It is hardly a masterpiece, however, and even the best parts have been done better by e.g. Prokofiev. It is nevertheless very much worth hearing, and it receives a splendid performance here; the singers are strong, as is the chorus, and contrary to the other reviewer I found Schell to be an eminently satisfying orator. The Prague Philharmonia turns in an idiomatic, impressive, colorful and spirited performance under James Sedares and the sound quality is fine. Do hear it, if you have the chance, but don't expect a forgotten masterpiece.

I bought this because I like Waxman's film music and because it featured Rodney Gilfry. There are some nice choruses and singing from the soloists. Also there are moments (to be expected) of Waxman's film scores. But the work is totally sabotaged by the narrator, Maximillian Schell. His reading is excrutiatingly bad! It is horribly overdone and makes one's stomach churn. I have never heard anyone ham so much--not even Barrymore when he was drunk as a skunk. Schell's delivery is even too awful to be a parody. And to think that this man won an Academy Award. They should make him give it back.