Piano music has always played an integral role in motion pictures, but perhaps never so much as during the 1930's and 1940's when a lush piano and orchestra score was considered essential to convey romantic emotions. Some directors, like David Lean in Brief Encounter, used repertory works, but many others commissioned scores written specifically for the film at hand. A collection of these is found on a new EMI release (Angel SZ-37757) played by Daniel Adni and the Bournemouth Sympony Orchestra. The most famous piece, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, wasn't written for a film at all, but has been included because of its prominence in Universal's 1930 King of Jazz as well as in Warner Brothers' 1945 Gershwin biography starring Robert Alda. The 1941 English film Dangerous Moonlight caused a stir with its Warsaw Concerto, a sweeping affair written by Richard Addinsell, whose other film credits include the scores for Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Dark Journey. Similar in scope to the Warsaw Concerto is the score for the 1944 English Love Story, in which Margaret Lockwood, as a pianist with a fatal disease, falls in love with Stewart Granger, an RAF pilot who is going blind. The plot line suggests the flavor of the film's Cornish Rhapsody, composed by Herbert Bath. Miklos Rozsa, one of the most successful of such composers, is represented by his 1945 Spellbound Concerto, from the Hitchcock film and featuring that eerie electric instrument called the theramin. It's a diverting program, and though the Gershwin is played a bit stiffly, the remainder tugs at the heartstrings in a most effective manner.

The Brahms Violin Concerto has been newly recorded by Pinchas Zukerman and the Orchestre de Paris, Daniel Barenboim conducting (DG 2531 251). The opening is taken very slowly, though not with as much grandeur as, for example, Giulini and the Chicago Symphony (Angel). Overall, however, Barenboim's is a well-balanced view of this work. Zukerman's playing is gorgeous and sensitive in phrasing throughout, and, for their part, the Paris players have the measure of the music's warmth and intensity. A distinctive performance.