Carrying on with Snow White Week, I give to you a version or With a Smile and a Song reworked to be in the style of the famous Polish composer, Frédéric Chopin.
CHOPIN had a great sense of rhythmic style and tempo. He favoured rubato, slight slowing down and speeding up of tempo, in his music instead of exaggerated ritardandos. He wanted to keep his music flowing and made great use of the legato style, which means playing all the notes smoothly together, almost slurring the notes together.
CAROL ROSENBERGER is the pianist on this track and you can really hear Chopin's style come out in her playing.
Way back on April 14 in 1969, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day was awarded an Oscar for Best Short Subject. The short, which originally aired in 1968 before The Horse in the Grey Flannel Suit, is an important one in history because it is the first appearance of Tigger in a Disney production. The story of the storm that floods the 100 Acre Wood and destroys Owl's house was later compiled with the other Pooh shorts to create the feature film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
I have chosen to post this classical version of the Winnie the Pooh theme by SHANGHAI QUARTET. The track comes off HEIGH-HO MOZART, an album in which Disney songs are interpreted in the styles of famous classical composers. Winnie the Pooh is arranged in the style of the famous Russian composer, SERGEI PROKOFIEV.
Sergei Prokofiev was a child prodigy. In 1896, he composed his first piece when he was five and he asked his mother to write it down because he couldn't do it himself. He continued to pursue his music and composed many symphonies, operas and even a film score for the 1938 film Alexander Nevsky.
Prokofiev's life got harder after WWII when the Soviet government decided that his music was a form of Russian Formalism and needed to be censored. This caused Prokofiev to withdraw from society in order to work on his music. It soon became common for theatres to refuse to play his compositions causing Prokofiev to withdraw even further. His health suffered and soon he was only working on his music for about an hour a day.
His last public presentation of his work was his Seventh Symphony in 1952 which he was asked to rewrite the ending to make it more cheery. He died a year later of a cerebral hemorrhage. Prokofiev's life and his work have become important in Russian history as he is considered to be one of the greatest composers in the 20th century.
If WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART was still alive, yesterday he would have turned 252! To celebrate Mozart's birthday I am posting another track from HEIGH-HO MOZART, a collection of Disney songs arranged in the styles of great composers. Here is the title track, Heigh-Ho in the style of the great Baroque composer played by the SHANGHAI QUARTET.
Mozart was a child genius. He started playing the clavier at the age of three and composing his own tunes at five! He is one of the most well known and most popular classical composers of all time. Along with his many symphonies, piano and violin concertos and sonatas, and operettas, he also composed many pieces for string quartets. This version of Heigh-Ho mimics this style.
The Shanghai Quartet is a very well known string quartet that formed in Shanghai in 1983. They have grown in popularity and have played some of the nicest venues all over the world. They have recorded many albums along with such musicians as Yo-Yo Ma, Ruth Laredo, and Arnold Steinhardt. They also provided the score for Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda
Beauty and the Beast - English Chamber Orchestra with Carol Rosenberger
Everybody give a big "Happy Birthday" to ANGELA LANSBURY who turns 82 today! Angela is a stage and screen veteran, having been in the movie, television and theatre business since 1944 acting in such memorable project like The Picture of Dorian Gray, the Manchurian Candidate, Murder, She Wrote and Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks! My favourite film of Angela's is Beauty and the Beast.
So, to commemorate Angela Lansbury's birthday, I am posting a cover of the song she sang as Mrs. Potts, Beauty and the Beast. This particular recording was composed by Donald Fraser and is performed by the ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA with CAROL ROSENBERGER on the piano.
As with all the tracks on HEIGH-HO MOZART, this piece was re-written in the style of a great classical composer. In this case it is SERGEI RACHMANINOFF, a Russian composer and pianist whose work was influential in the Romantic era of classical music. He is known for his flowing melodies and beautiful piano scores. One of his most famous works, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is a standard in the classical world and is also used frequently in film.
This interpretation of Beauty and the Beast is modeled after one of his piano concertos. Rachmaninov had really big hands, allowing he to play thirteenths on the piano. You can hear this being mimicked in this track.
Beauty and the Beast English Chamber Orchestra 1995
Another thank-you goes out to Fong Songs for giving me a plug on his cover tunes site! I know you want to hear an Aladdin cover, so here it is!
This version of Prince Ali is taken from the album HEIGH-HO MOZART, a collection of Disney songs done in the style of classical composers, and is reworked to echo the styles of Béla Bartók.
The piece is performed by the MILLAR BRASS ENSEMBLE and is one of the only Aladdin covers I have that isn't A Whole New World! I hope you enjoy it!
Over the years, many musical artists have paid tribute to the music of Disney. This blog pays tribute to those artists.
You won't find any original Disney songs here, these are all covers, interpretations and variations on the tunes we all love.
Covering the Mouse is not associated with Disney or any major record label. If you wish to have a song removed from my site, please email me and I will be happy to comply.
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