Rózsa Miklós Rózsa

Miklós Rózsa (Hungarian: [ˈmikloːʃ ˈroːʒɒ]; 18 April 1907 – 27 July 1995) was a Hungarian-American composer trained in Germany (1925–1931), and active in France (1931–1935), the United Kingdom (1935–1940), and the United States (1940–1995), with extensive sojourns in Italy from 1953. Best known for his nearly one hundred film scores, he nevertheless maintained a steadfast allegiance to absolute concert music throughout what he called his "double life."

Rózsa achieved early success in Europe with his orchestral Theme, Variations, and Finale (Op. 13) of 1933 and became prominent in the film industry from such early scores as The Four Feathers (1939) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). The latter project brought him to America when production was transferred from wartime Britain, and Rózsa remained in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1946. His notable Hollywood career earned him considerable fame, including Academy Awards for Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1947), and Ben-Hur (1959), while his concert works were championed by such major artists as Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, and János Starker.

Works

Rózsa's first major success was the orchestral Theme, Variations, and Finale, Op. 13, introduced in Duisburg, Germany, in 1934 and soon taken up by Charles Munch, Karl Böhm, Bruno Walter, Hans Swarowsky, and other leading conductors. It was first played in the United States by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Hans Lange on October 28 and 29, 1937, and achieved wide exposure through a 1943 New York Philharmonic concert broadcast when Leonard Bernstein made his famous conducting debut.

By 1952, his film score work was proving so successful that he was able to negotiate a clause in his contract with MGM that gave him three months each year away from the film studio so that he could focus on concert music.

Rózsa's Violin Concerto, Op. 24, was composed in 1953–54 for the violinist Jascha Heifetz, who collaborated with the composer in fine-tuning it. Rózsa later adapted portions of this work for the score of Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), the plot of which, Wilder has said, was inspired by Rózsa's concerto.

Rózsa's Cello Concerto, Op. 32 was written much later (1967–68) at the request of the cellist János Starker, who premiered the work in Berlin in 1969.

Between his violin and cello concertos, Rózsa composed his Sinfonia Concertante, Op. 29, for violin, cello, and orchestra. The commissioning artists, Heifetz and his frequent collaborator Gregor Piatigorsky, never performed the finished work, although they did record a reduced version of the slow movement, called Tema con Variazoni, Op. 29a.

Rózsa also received recognition for his choral works. His collaboration with conductor Maurice Skones and The Choir of the West at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, resulted in a commercial recording of his sacred choral works—To Everything There is a Season, Op. 20; The Vanities of Life, Op. 30; and The Twenty-Third Psalm, Op. 34—produced by John Steven Lasher and recorded by Allen Giles for the Entr'acte Recording Society in 1978.

In popular culture

His theme, "The Duchess of Brighton" from his 1961 film The V.I.P.s was used as the intro of the Belgian children's TV series Johan en de Alverman (1965-1966).

The sixth variation (after the theme) of his "Theme, Variations And Finale," Op. 13, was used as part of the soundtrack in four episodes—most notably "The Clown Who Cried"—of the 1950s television series "The Adventures of Superman".