Good music can be anything from pop to opera, says composer/conductor Carl Davis. Elitism doesn't really mean anything, he points out. It's not a guarantee of quality. "What I'm worried about in this age of cutbacks in the arts, is whether or not live performance will survive."
Davis was in Dublin last week, conducting the RTE Concert Orchestra at the National Concert Hall in a popular programme. It was his third time to do so, "and the best to date. We created a mood. They (the orchestra) can play anything from Korngold to Dirty Dancing - and we did." Davis has lived in London for 30 years and recently re-orchestrated, arranged and conducted that most English of music, Gilbert & Sullivan's, for Mike Leigh's film Topsy Turvy, but he remains a fast-talking, funny, very clever New Yorker, all gestures, zany smile, and slightly manic laugh. The broad face and wild hair could be the property of any 19th-century European composer but "I'm an American".
Mention his name and there will be those who register a blank, but his film, television, theatre and ballet music credits amount to a lengthy CV, while he has also written superb scores for many classic silent films including Ben-Hur, The Big Parade, The Crowd, Napoleon, Waterloo, Keaton's The General and Dubliner Rex Ingram's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. When that film was screened at the National Concert Hall in 1992, Davis took the podium as the conductor.
He first became famous as the composer of the haunting theme music of the Thames TV series, The World at War. His work on that series which included writing all the music for 26 hours of television won him an Emmy. As his wife, English actress Jean Boht, recalls: "It gave him his first real money. We had just got married the year before; the first baby was on the way." Other music for television includes The Snow Goose, The Naked Civil Servant, Our Mutual Friend, Hollywood, Churchill: The Wilderness Years, Silas Marner, Hotel du Lac, Pride and Prejudice and others.
When composing the music for the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's classic he decided not to write for a full symphony orchestra, "I wanted the sense of a small town in 1810. The merit lay in containing the sound. The model I started from was Beethoven's marvellous E flat Septet, which was written about that period. It was enormously popular in Austen's time and I thought: `That's the sound I want for intimate scenes in this.' For the larger set pieces a group of 18 musicians was used." He also decided to feature an instrument from the period, the forte-piano, the forerunner of today's piano. "It has the same hammer action but produces a sound which is uniquely its own, and quite different from that of the modern instrument, and it was just the character of sound I was looking for."
His approach to any score for a book adaptation is dictated by the text. "In the case of Jane Austen, there is also the time, the era. There was no TV; music was the main entertainment. There were two things I wanted to communicate: the first was to pick up the essence of the story - its wit and vitality, its modern feel, and something of the character of Elizabeth and her family. I worked through something very lively and bright for this and then, without my being conscious of it, a slight hunting refrain crept in - which of course picks up one of the main drives of the book, the hunt for husbands.
"And this linked to my second theme, which was marriage and affairs of the heart. That is what the story is about - should these girls be looking for a sensible match, or should they hold out for a marriage based on love? Sense and sensibility run through all Jane Austen's novels - heart versus the mind; practicality versus feeling. I tried to address these polarities." The result is a classical score, performed by Melvyn Tan. Davis was also looking to period when he composed the music for The French Lieutenant's Woman.
"But for something like The Great Gatsby [a forthcoming BBC production], I turned to jazz and the rhythms of Bix Beiderbecke and have used the trumpet sound extensively; it's a line running through it." Almost as an aside spoken to himself, Davis remarks: "It's a great book, a book of parties." It's typical of Davis, even when speaking at speed, he gives the impression his mind is working equally quickly on something else.
Davis was born in New York in 1936, the only child of parents who were the children of emigrants. "It's Polish and Russian. But I see myself as American, both my parents were born in the States. Still, like most Americans there's always that something else in the background." His father worked in the post office - "he was a clerk, with no interest in music" - and his mother was a maths teacher. "She's a fantastic character almost 90, and very funny." She was also hugely supportive. The young Carl began playing piano at seven. "I was good at it, but you know, I discovered very early that what I really enjoyed was accompanying singers. I wasn't interested in playing the piano for the sake of just playing, it had to be as part of something else." He seems to have been a prodigy in a hurry.
For all his friendliness Davis doesn't speak about his life, unless repeatedly prodded; he is more concerned with the music. "What was I like? Difficult, spoilt, demanding, temperamental. I wanted to do everything - and quickly. No I wasn't easy, I was bewildering. But I turned out well. Don't forget in the New York I grew up in, everything was possible, or at least everything seemed possible." Is he happy? "I'm not complacent, but I do enjoy what I do."
At any given time he has about 12 projects on hand. "Now I'm on my way to Liverpool, £15 Ryanair, to do a preview of The Liverpool Pops at the King's Docks. We've done it every summer, in July, for two weeks, since 1993." There he conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. "You know I made my debut at the Proms last year - it's great fun. I'll tell you what one of my reviews said . . . it was pretty insulting, but it's a great quote: `Carl Davis conducted as if he wanted to tear his clothes off.' Well it was a very hot night."
Told as a joke perhaps but the deceptively deliberate, precise Davis is aware that despite his obvious classical credentials, such as the fact he was appointed assistant conductor of the New York City Opera at 22, and his compositions include a Clarinet Concerto (1984) and Fantasy for Flute and Harpsichord (1985), he is regarded as a maverick by the classical fraternity, because he is most widely known for his film and TV scores. "I spent the first 20 years of the [not "my"] career as a composer, I was a backroom boy. Then I went public - in 1980 I began working with this wonderful man, Kevin Brownlow." The project concerned the restoration by Brownlow of Abel Gance's silent epic, Napoleon, which was made in 1927. Brownlow and David Gill restored the print of more than five hours of footage. Davis composed the score and conducted it in the London cinema in which it was screened.
"It was a big event: all 1,400 seats were sold out within 45 minutes of coming on the market. It brought me back to conducting but it also taught me so much about the silent movies. It was always assumed that these pictures were screened with just one pianist pounding away at the corner of the stage. This wasn't so; the movie houses often employed musicians. There could be an actual orchestra involved. Some of the films had their own scores. I've found it hugely rewarding; we've done about 30 so far. These are great movies. They had everything except sound and for that reason they were overshadowed, but now they are being re-discovered. They're played all over the world now, at film festivals and so on. I think it's great."
This work has also reiterated something he was always aware of: "I enjoy collaboration; I like being part of a team. Remember what I said about working with singers? It's like the conducting. Live concerts are an antidote to life in the recording studio, and I find that what you get back from working with an orchestra stimulates me as a composer." Part of his strength as a composer lies in his visual sense, "it helps a lot when you're trying to create an atmosphere from another time".
Judging by his range and output, there is the slight suggestion he may be hyperactive. This causes him to laugh outright but he doesn't deny it. "You also have to work fast in this business." He is now 63, a reality of which he has constantly to remind himself. "Sometimes it hits me and I tell myself `you're old, old' but then I forget about it and do something." He has written scores for films as diverse as The French Lieutenant's Woman, Champions, The Rainbow and Scandal. What happens if a commission comes up with which he has no sympathy, after all, he is in a market place? "If I think I can't do it, I get out. But that's now. If I were at the very beginning and I needed the money - I don't know."
Considering his European background, did he find working on the music for The World at War, particularly distressing? "I'm Jewish, but I don't think of myself in that way. Of course I know what happened. Members of my mother's family on the Polish side disappeared in the camps. But I don't think of myself like that . . . It's only when I come to Europe and there's weight or burden."
Davis agrees he doesn't respond to things in an overly personal way. "I'm not like that. I was born in 1936. America's war began in 1941, the European one had in '39, I was aware of it; you saw newspapers. I would see myself in relation to three things: America, Eastern Europe and being Jewish. The Jewishness is more cultural than religious. We lived with my mother's parents so I was always aware of that Europe. I never found out much about my father's family. He never spoke about it and when I tried to find out something, very little surfaced. He's dead now. But I would say I'm American. When our daughters were born in England, I insisted they both got US passports as well."
Arrival in England was more of a gradual process than an ambition. "I studied composition in Copenhagen and wandered about. When I came to England I must admit I was drawn by the theatre not the music."
His ballet music for A Simple Man won a BAFTA, but before that he had already won the Italia Prize for the music for The Flip Side, a BBC radio play. "I worked a lot for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre and I enjoy writing for ballet, we did a great Alice in Wonderland for the English National Ballet in 1995. But I do resent this barrier between classical and popular. I love classical music, from Palestrina to Shostakovich, but I also love jazz and Disney. I love Bernstein . . . I'd like to do something with West Side Story. Just because you like one type of music, or play a particular type, doesn't mean that you can't enjoy the other. I never set out as some kind of campaigner but I have become one. I don't like elitism; it's damaging. And sure, I'm committed to live performance and I think we should look at exactly who we are playing for, and to. The concert-going audience have been behaving the same way for 150 years. It's time to change that. I think some, most of, today's opera-goers have forgotten that opera was a popular form, originally written for everyone, not just the rich."
Mention of the popular seems the right cue for Topsy Turvy. "I've always loved Gilbert & Sullivan. They're great tunes. I've always admired Sullivan. I think they were a great pairing." As a teenager back in Brooklyn, Davis played the piano for the local Gilbert & Sullivan society. "I've always been aware of their music and Mike Leigh's an old friend. One of our daughters is the bride in the opening shots of Secrets and Lies. Topsy Turvy is gorgeous and funny, but don't watch it on a video; it has to be seen in a cinema."
How did he approach the original music when arranging it for the film? "I let the mood dominate. The music is being used to tell the story, so some pieces are played slower to match the tone and mood. We also selected the music according to the story and the thing about Gilbert and Sullivan is there is a lot of choice. The music is very lively." Chamber music has always been important to Davis: "I play a lot of Bach and Mozart and Haydn. It's good for the fingers and great for the soul. But this is another thing, partly because of the trend towards playing on original period instruments, orchestras don't play 18th-century music anymore. This is serious. It means musicians are losing dexterity. I want to have orchestras playing Mozart and Haydn." At times wanting to broaden the range can go wrong. "I did a concert with Nigel Kennedy, a great violinist, wonderful technique. The first half he played a classical concerto, then after the interval he came back with a jazz group. I lost my audience."
Davis is a good talker, a game mimic - though he does a lousy Irish accent - and enjoys acting as a compere of sorts during his concerts. "I like introducing the music and saying a bit about it." The backroom boy has certainly asserted himself. It is not surprising that he hosts a radio show, Carl Davis Classics, on BBC Radio 2. "It's fun, and as the Radio 2 audience is not a classical one, the idea is getting them to listen to pieces. I always have a guest. I find newscasters are always good, foreign correspondents are particularly good. They tend to listen to classical music as a relief from stress. And they're good talkers, they see things." A bit like him.
After Liverpool, it is back to London and then off to Luxembourg to work on another silent classic, Chaplain's Gold Rush which was made in 1925. Now that Davis knows he is a campaigner for music, what does he want to see? "I know what I want. In fact I saw it in Dublin last night" - (where the concert programme was devoted to Academy Award winning music). "After we rehearsed, I came back to the hotel for a little while and then prepared to go back. I have this theatre thing, I like being there at least a half hour early. I noticed this family group - the father, the mother, two kids. They were casually dressed, trainers and so on. And I said to myself, `make them turn right. Let them be going to the Concert Hall. If they do, it's going to be a good night.' They did and it was."
A new BBC adaptation of The Great Gatsby with music by Carl Davis will be screened on BBC 1 on April 1st. Davis returns to Dublin on August 30th as part of the Let's Face the Music series of concerts at the National Concert Hall. Topsy Turvy is currently showing nation-wide.
