Oscar Levant 1906-1972

[giles.enders]

I recently watched an old Fred Astaire film which had Oscar Levant playing Khatchaturian's Sabre Dance in a version for piano and orchestra.  Does any one know where the score for this version is?  Oscar Levant also wrote a piano concerto in 1936 of which I know nothing more, has it ever been recorded. I suspect it might be a real virtuoso piece

[jerfilm]

I was very disappointed in the Piano Concerto - hoping for a big, romantic sounding affair.  Which is definitely is NOT.  Lots of dissonance, no discernible melodies.   

Didn't Levant play a fairly significant role in the 1945 film biography of George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue? 

Jerry

[pianoconcerto]

I recently watched an old Fred Astaire film which had Oscar Levant playing Khatchaturian's Sabre Dance in a version for piano and orchestra.  Does any one know where the score for this version is?  Oscar Levant also wrote a piano concerto in 1936 of which I know nothing more, has it ever been recorded. I suspect it might be a real virtuoso piece

I'm not sure about the Sabre Dance, but the 14-minute concerto was released on CD and LP in an old recording (it was premiered 17 February 1942 by NBC SO).  Virgil Thomson wrote:  "The concerto is, beneath its schoolboy homage to Gershwin and Schoenberg, hard and lonely and original music, full of song and solitude."  Don't expect something like the Gershwin Concerto.  More avantgarde, less memorable.

Levant, Oscar (1906-72) USA
Concerto (1936)
DRG 13113 (CD)/Medallion Records ML 310:  Oscar Levant/NBC SO/Alfred Wallenstein

There's also a broadcast recording by Alan Feinberg/American Composers O/Dennis Russell Davies (10 January 1999)

[X. Trapnel]

Levant wrote the score for the 1937 film Nothing Sacred; not much music in it but the few scraps there are really do sound like Gershwin, none of it recorded though.