By Jon Burlingame. Photo Credit: Kevin Parry Photography
The debut of The Scott Dunn Orchestra at Beverly Hills' Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, May 22, was a special occasion for two reasons. First, it's the latest attempt to create a Los Angeles ensemble specifically devoted to the performance of film music; and second, its all-Henry Mancini program was filled with "firsts" and delightful variations on what has become a standard collection of "greatest hits."
With the blessing of the Mancini family, Dunn (a pianist and conductor who studied with composers Leonard Rosenman and Richard Rodney Bennett) unearthed original Mancini manuscripts at the Library of Congress and fashioned, in many cases, entirely new suites of classic numbers that have usually been heard in revised concert arrangements.
He opened the program with a complete surprise: A previously unknown Mancini composition from 1947 titled "Bagatelle": a four-minute big-band-with-strings number written for the Tex Benecke-led Glenn Miller Orchestra (for which Mancini was then playing piano and writing arrangements). Dunn termed this upbeat curtain-raiser a "portent of things to come" from the then 23-year-old wunderkind.
The rest of the program was drawn from three decades of Mancini's music for movies and TV, mostly in chronological order. Dunn's 50-piece orchestra played two works from Mancini's six-year stint at Universal: the gorgeous "Too Little Time," from his Oscar-nominated score for 1954's The Glenn Miller Story, and the Latin colors of the opening of Orson Welles' 1958 noir classic Touch of Evil.
The composer's breakthrough score, the jazz for TV's 1958 private-eye series Peter Gunn, was presented in a fresh and exciting way. Dunn arranged four key numbers into a nine-minute suite: the opening title theme (as Mancini originally wrote it, never before played in concert) followed by "Session at Pete's Pad," the love theme "Dreamsville," and the driving "Blue Steel." He added the exotic "Lujon" from Mr. Lucky Goes Latin, another hit album from a Blake Edwards-produced TV series.
Dunn also offered the original film versions of two pieces from the 1963 John Wayne film Hatari!: its Afro-Cuban-influenced title music and the boogie-woogie hit "Baby Elephant Walk" (which won three of the composer's 20 Grammy Awards). Concluding the first half was a nine-minute suite from Breakfast at Tiffany's, which won two 1961 Oscars and five more Grammys in 1962.
This collection of Mancini's original film cues—the harmonica-led "Moon River," the sedate "Sally's Tomato" and "Holly," plus the dramatic finale "Where's the Cat?"—was a welcome departure from the familiar concert versions of this score. Adding to the period flavor was the 12-voice choir Tonality, which did a superb job re-creating Mancini's patented choral sound. Many in the crowd at the Wallis were misty-eyed, as the music instantly recalled those final moments of the film with Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard in the rain.
Dunn opened the second half with the theme from Charade in its percussion-driven original 1963 film version and followed it with another unexpected treat: the powerful finale from 1962's Days of Wine and Roses, together with its memorable and (again) Oscar- and Grammy-winning title song.
The mood was considerably lightened with an eight-minute suite of music from 1963's The Pink Panther, including the title theme, the elegant "Champagne and Quail" and the very fun, Italian-flavored "It Had Better Be Tonight" again featuring Tonality. Haunting music from the somewhat more obscure Soldier in the Rain (also 1963) followed, along with the title song from Two for the Road (1967), with violinist Bruce Dukov doing a Stephane Grappelli-inspired solo as in the original film.
The orchestra closed the two-hour show with a wonderful five-minute suite from Edwards' musical comedy Victor / Victoria, which won well-deserved 1982 Oscars for both Mancini and lyricist Leslie Bricusse (including the songs "Shady Dame," "Crazy World," "You and Me" and "Le Jazz Hot"). The audience's standing ovation demanded an encore: the rousing march from Mancini's 1975 The Great Waldo Pepper.
It was a night to remember, filled with classic Mancini melodies, beautifully performed in their original film versions. Mancini's son Chris was among those in the audience; and a handful of the veteran musicians on stage had performed with the composer back in the 1980s and early 1990s.