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Intrada announces an expanded release of Laurence Rosenthal's score to Requiem for a Heavyweight and a reissue of A Raisin in the Sun. While the original release featured music sourced from the composer's personal but incomplete 1/4″ master tapes, with newly gained access to Sony's film music stems Intrada was able to expand the Requiem program to include not only the previously unreleased film version of the Main Title, but several other key music sequences.
For context, the early '60s saw the emergence of one of Hollywood's most talented yet underrated film composers: Laurence Rosenthal. This release highlights two of his early dramatic works. The complete score to the 1961 Columbia film A Raisin in the Sun features a lyrical main theme that bookends the film, while throughout most of the film the character of Walter (Sidney Poitier) receives an agitated four-note motif—heard first in a jazz setting, but also darkening the orchestra in later cues, where it eventually intercepts the main theme. Angular and modern, Walter's music clashes with that of his formidable mother, whose opening soliloquy introduces a third theme: a gentle, empathic melody, most often conveying wisdom and solace …but which Rosenthal twists into anguish for moments of despair and disappointment.
The films focuses on Walter Younger, a chauffeur with frustrated business ambitions; his long suffering wife, Ruth (Ruby Dee), who aches to quit their rat-hole apartment; his firebrand sister, Beneatha (Diana Sands), who plans to become a doctor; and his iron-willed mothe,r Lena (Claudia McNeil), who prays for a better life for the family. The family's destiny ultimately hinges on a single choice: to accept a buyout from the racist "welcoming committee" who does not want them to move into their neighborhood or to assert their dignity and gamble on the dream of a fresh start.
Rosenthal's jazz-rooted score for the 1962 Columbia film Requiem for a Heavyweight highlights mixed-meter writing and close-spaced harmonies, tapping into New York's grimy underbelly with rumbling piano, percussion, stinging brass and solo reeds. The main theme, with its bluesy rhythms and rising lines, is essentially in the major mode, but is constrained in the "Main Title" by dissonant minor chords and the "fight bell" clang of pounding chimes. It conveys both the swagger of a man who knows he was "almost heavyweight champion of the world," and the existential tragedy of a man awakening to the terrible realization that he has somehow died—yet must go on living. Balancing the darkness is Rosenthal's charming waltz theme, for his blossoming, tender relationship with Grace.
The Rod Serling tale starts with Mountain learning that his 17-year boxing career has been ended by too many tissue-damaging blows to the head. This spells doom for his manager, Maish, who has lost everything—and then some—to the crime boss "Ma" Greeny. Desperate, Maish hatches a self-serving plan to reinvent Mountain as a costumed wrestler … a clownish mockery of his former self.
The album was produced by Laurence Rosenthal and Douglass Fake, with new editing and mastering provided by Chris Malone. Rounded out with compelling notes by John Takis, this release is a much needed upgrade to these two classic scores.
- Intrada
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