CBS’s New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concert
From deep in the Eastman Museum vaults comes this selection of classical music on film, from both cinema and television. The program is anchored by a selection of pieces from the Austrian television series Der Fenstergucker featuring the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. In five segments, the orchestra plays selections from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Strauss’s Pizzicato Polka, Offenbach’s Orpheus in Hades, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and Beethoven’s Turkish March. Also from the television side is an incomplete episode of CBS’s New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts. Conducted by Leonard Bernstein before a crowd of school-age children, the pieces focus on overtures, including Semiramide by Gioachino Rossini and the Third Leonore Overture by Beethoven. From 1952, A Concert Album features an array of artists, including Charles Kullman and the Men of Song performing “Thanks be to Thee” by Handel and “The Sleigh” by Richard Kountz; Constance Keene playing one of Chopin’s Polonaise; Nadine Connor singing “Sempre Libera” from Verdi’s La Traviata; and Tossy Spivakovsky playing a piece from Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Finally, Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig offer a take on a waltz by Strauss and Daffy Duck reenacts the story of the Ugly Duckling to the strains of Strauss’s The Blue Danube in A Corny Concerto.
New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concert [Incomplete]
(director unidentified, US 1963, 30 min., 16mm)
A Concert Album
(director unidentified, US 1952, 18 min., 16mm)
[Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra]
(Leopold Hainisch, Germany 1958, 36 min., 16mm)
A Corny Concerto
(Robert Clampett, US 1943, 8 min., 16mm)