Miklos Rozsa composed his Viola Concerto in 1979, following the advice of his old chum Piatigorsky, who suggested he write something for Pinchas Zukerman. Although Zukerman gave the premiere, this is the first recording. Rozsa was then working on the score for Alain Resnais's Providence, a film he describes in his autobiography, Double Life, as having music ''like a nostalgic reminiscence of my youth... musique grise''. Something of the same mood permeates this concerto—the origins of Rozsa's music lay in folk-song, which, he claimed, made his unaccompanied instrumental pieces successful as descendants of pure folk-song. The solo part in this concerto bears traces of this traditional element, though some of its scoring is as lush as much of Rozsa's film music (think of the paranoia theme and concerto from Hitchcock's Spellbound). Maria Newman, the soloist, tackles the long part—the opening moderato assai is a 14-minute virtuoso battle with several unaccompanied passages demanding bravura technique. I doubt if Rozsa himself would thank the record company for the title, ''Symphonic Hollywood'', as he has always striven to keep his film and concert music apart. It seems there is no escape, however, for Maria Newman is the daughter of Alfred, composer of the Twentieth-Century Fox fanfare.
Lee Holdridge's Film themes suite is a piece that would once have been an ideal item to be featured on the BBC's Light Programme. It is a characteristic of the most effective film music that it should intrude on the consciousness only to add mood—that it sounds slightly familiar is an advantage. The theme from a Mexican documentary Pueblo del Sol is a Tchaikovsky-style waltz, the main theme from East of Eden (not the James Dean film, but a 1981 remake) a country-style ballad.
Holdridge's Elegy for harp and strings started as music for a TV film, Gemini Man; like the Scenes of summer, it is programme mood music, soporific, reassuring.'