Release Date: 01 August 2003
Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 636943912324
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: BERLIN
Description
Irving Berlin (1888-1989) Berlin for BrassThe life of the great American song-writer Irving Berlin spanned most of the great events of the twentieth century. His remarkable trajectory from a small town in Russia to a mansion in Manhattan is the quintessential story of an immigrant who embraced the opportunities America had to offer and who gave creative riches back to it many times over. Descended from a line of cantors, he was born Israel Baline in Byelorussia. Fleeing anti-Semitic pogroms, his family escaped to the United States when Berlin was five. The family, who spoke only Yiddish, passed through immigration at Ellis Island and into the crowded tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It was there that Berlin first showed his tremendous ability to adapt, to a new country, a new language and a new culture. This ability would later carry over into his music and he would use it to brilliantly navigate most of the trends of twentieth century popular culture. "Izzy" was thirteen when his father died, and he took to the streets finding what work he could, eventually winding up as a singing waiter at a rough café in Chinatown. In 1907 he published a successful song, Marie From Sunny Italy, and by 1909 he was a regular on Tin Pan Alley, the centre of New York’s popular music industry. In 1911 he produced Alexander’s Rag Time Band, a hit song of national proportions, and a great career was launched. After creating a craze for Tin Pan Alley’s version of ragtime, Berlin turned increasingly to writing for shows and, when World War I arrived, this momentum carried through his induction into the Army. Yip! Yip! Yaphank, a musical revue created as a fund-raiser for the war effort was such a success that it spilled over from the Army’s Camp Upton, in Yaphank, New York, onto Broadway. Revues remained the rage on Broadway after the war and in the roaring 1920s Berlin and a partner built New York’s Music Box Theater. There he was able to exercise creative control over a series of noted revues, including the 1933 ground-breaking As Thousands Cheer. It was also during the 1920s that Berlin, whose first wife had died shortly after their marriage in 1912, remarried, making headlines by wedding Catholic socialite and author, Ellin Mackay. In 1934 Irving Berlin travelled to Hollywood and wrote classic songs for the great Depression-era movie musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. During World War II, the ever-patriotic Berlin created This Is The Army, a touring revue for the Allied troops, and travelled with it throughout many theatres of the war, often in difficult circumstances and sometimes at considerable personal risk. His classic song White Christmas, written for the 1942 film Holiday Inn, was a nostalgic favourite to homesick American soldiers everywhere and has become the world’s best-selling piece of sheet music. Lavish story musicals were staples on Broadway in the optimistic post-war
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Glen Wilson
Gabriel Schwabe/Hellen Weiss
Fritz Kreisler
