Following their recordings of Bernard Herrmann's Symphony (9/92) and pieces by Herrmann, Waxman and Rozsa (7/93), Koch continue to explore the fascinating concert world of master Hollywood film composers with this superb collection of Rozsa's high-powered orchestral works.
The fervent Magyar rhythms that captivated Rozsa during his upbringing in Hungary spice almost every bar of his music for both concert-hall and screen, but strikingly so in his early non-film work. The Theme, Variations and Finale from 1933 was inspired by a wistful melody that came to him after leaving his family and homeland for Paris. Championed by Charles Munch amongst others, it helped to make Rozsa's international reputation (revised ten years later, after suggestions from Bruno Walter, it received a dynamic New York premiere under the baton of a young Leonard Bernstein). Tightly structured and bustling with youthful energy, it illustrates perfectly how Rozsa's rhapsodic intensity and flair for dramatic shading would soon lead to a remarkable career in Hollywood (Variation No. 4 could have come straight from one of the many films noirs he later scored during the 1940s). Similarly flavourful and just as vigorously rhythmic are the Three Hungarian Sketches (1938), whilst the balmy, moonlit Hungarian Nocturne (1964), reminiscent of his impressionistic score for Lust for Life, is the composer's attempt ''to recapture the rare beauty of the nights on our estate in rural Hungary''. The composition of the turbulent, compelling Overture (recorded here in its tautened revised version) coincided with the Hungarian revolution in 1957 and though not consciously intending to echo these events in musical terms, Rozsa later wrote ''it seems to me in retrospect that the music is full of conflict and heroism and embodies something of the spirit of my country's fight for freedom''.
The driving urgency and romantic ardour that so characterizes Rozsa's music has eluded many performers, but here the thrilling readings of James Sedares and the NZSO are remarkably intuitive and, in the composer's own words, ''combine passion with discipline in exactly the way my music demands''. Add to this a clean, full-bodied recording and no further endorsement is required.'