"100 Years of Elmer Bernstein" is a live album of a concert held in December 2022 in Ireland's capital Dublin to mark 100 years since the birth of Elmer Bernstein. Elmer Bernstein (no relation to Leonard Bernstein) is one of the great film composers, and I was privileged to see him in concert in Glasgow before his death at the age of 82 in 2004. He left behind a huge legacy of iconic films and iconic film scores. This concert celebrates that legacy with a selection of some of his great scores. Elmer's son Peter Bernstein (also an experienced composer) conducted the orchestra for the concert, giving authenticity to the event, and helped to set the scene for the audience. The evening's host for the concert was Tim Burden, who presented the event and these presentation elements are included on the album as a series of tracks marked "Interludes" throughout the recording.
The concert was opened appropriately with "Hollywood and the Stars", a theme Bernstein composed for the documentary series of the same name. Then after a brief introduction, we hear two tracks of suites which together epitomise the breadth of the composer's range, the rousing "The Magnificent Seven" and the sweeping Viennese elegance of "The Age of Innocence". For a period Bernstein was getting typecast as a composer of comedy music (with several examples to be heard later in the concert) and he scored "My Left Foot" for free, being so grateful to being offered something that was not a comedy. His music for "My Left Foot" is poignant with subtle hints of Irish folk. Those comedy examples are presented next as the track "The Comedy Suite", starting with the World Premiere of a track called "God Music", Bernstein's small contribution to "The Blues Brothers" which of course was filled with so many iconic Blues songs. This "God Music" comes in "The Blues Brothers" as Jake and Elwood decide to get their group back together again. It is left to the audience to identify the other films included in the Comedy Suite.
The concert is full of such rare and varied music, with two jazz scores next "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Sweet Smell of Success". "Slipstream" is another World Premiere, a Suite of music from the science fiction film starring Mark Hamill and Bill Paxton among others. Robert Townson is a music producer who worked extensively with a number of film composers to release albums of their music. Townson introduces the next track which is the Bernstein's unforgettable yet innocent music for "To Kill a Mockingbird". This is followed by "Toccata for Toy Trains", a film that many fans may not know but is a documentary which is really about "Toy Trains". After the quirky music in the "Grifters" Suite, the main concert closes with two more well-known scores from the composer, the Western "True Grit" and the Biblical Epic "The Ten Commandments". Son Peter introduces this as the score where Cecil B. DeMille helped Bernstein to avoid being blacklisted as a communist in the uneasy political climate of cold-war America.
The concert finishes off with two encores, the "National Geographic" theme and "The Great Escape" theme, closing with the Irish National Anthem. In closing this review I cannot help but mention that as well as being a great composer in his own right, Bernstein was a fantastic champion of film music in general and of the music of other composers in the industry. It is entirely fitting that the man and his music should be celebrated in this way, and "100 Years of Elmer Bernstein" is a fitting tribute, wonderfully presented. The album is available from record stores and you can sample and purchase the album at the Bandcamp page of "Willow and Cavern" who produced the album: 100 Years of Elmer Bernstein - live concert recording.
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