By Simon Jenner
MusicWeb International
01-Apr-2001
'It was hard luck on Max Steiner having the same dates as Stravinsky (1888-1971) and not being recognised as the innovator he was. Hard luck too that he was trounced by Korngold, nine years his junior and who predeceased him by 14 years. One can only recall Korngold's riposte to Max Steiner's quip about Korngold getting worse and Steiner better. 'That's easy, Steiner ... you have been stealing from me and I have been stealing from you.'
'To disprove that here are two scores dating from 1932 and 1931 respectively. That is (though the booklet, understandably, hardly mentions Korngold at all) a couple of years before Korngold wrote his score for A Midsummer Night's Dream and six years before Robin Hood et al began the Viennese invasion from 1937.
'Steiner, whose brilliant orchestrator Bernhard Kaun had to follow the breakneck schedules, was usually rushed off his spools. He annoyed RKO boss Kahane by saying his hours were now 9am-6pm, not 9am-9am, and that the May Company were not hiring him to sleep in their window to prove that even RKO composers could sleep in their beds. Kahane thought he should accept their offer of a career, and all Hollywood got the joke except Kahane. Stokowski, Klemperer and Reiner were taking Steiner seriously even before the advent of Korngold.
'This was in part due not to King Kong, but to the movie that preceded it, The Most Dangerous Game, a real classic of pursuit and generally recognised as the first great film score. With its tritone theme on horns signalling the chase, the film washes ruggedly handsome Joel McCrea onto an island. He meets the sinister welcoming Count, Leslie Banks and guests, amongst whom hapless Fay Wray looms. What else would he do but attract her, so dashingly dishevelled, but still washed? She pairs with McCrea, in a kind of offer they can't refuse, to be hunted down. Guess you the rest, as Marlowe says in his version of Ovid's Amores. That bit comes only at the end, whilst the tritone (turning into a two-note motto at times) hunts down the fugitives through swamps, canyons, waterfall-fights a la Sherlock/Moriarty; and finales. The driving score never lets up and is in fact a true symphonic poem, a tremendous post-Straussian feat. Now we know where North by Northwest comes from.
'And we know where the next score derived from, in the title. Son of Kong was a hurried and ridiculously under-financed attempt to cap King Kong, itself containing Steiner's most famous score. Like most scores, Kong was overlooked by many, but not by those who mattered. Hence, Steiner was forced, like the rest of the Kong team, to attempt a six-month schedule. He had two weeks to write 45 minutes' worth of music. Amazingly, as Bill Whitaker - one of the two writers of this excellent, sumptuous booklet - says, it's masterly. It's more coherent and satisfying to listen through as a complete score than Kong, for all of that score's verve and ground-breaking power. At its heart there is nomore....
