Star power helps a classic set sail

Tennyson's romantic tale of thwarted love, set to music by Richard Strauss, had nearly been consigned to artistic history. But with a shared vision and fresh perspective, pianist John Bell Young and actor Michael York managed to get Enoch Arden a record deal.

By JOHN BELL YOUNG
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 27, 2002

LOS ANGELES -- A funny thing happened to me recently on the way to New York: Hollywood.

What began as a pianist's personal campaign to revive an all-but-lost art form was transformed into a full-scale collaboration with a movie star.

Along the way, this tale of chance and providence gave way to an old truth: Luck is nothing if not the meeting of opportunity and preparation.

Today, the word "melodrama" evokes visions of temper tantrums and soap operas. But originally, a melodrama was an art form in which instrumental music accompanied a poem or narrative that was spoken rather than sung. "Painting" in sound the mood and characters of the text, many famous composers, including Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt and Schoenberg, wrote these odd constructs. The most famous example of melodrama in our time is Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.

In 1962, pianist Glenn Gould revived the melodrama when he recorded Richard Strauss' Enoch Arden with golden era film star Claude Rains. Its initial run of 2,000 copies sold out in no time and then went out of print for more than 30 years. A handful of retired singers and nonactors have since recorded it, all without much fanfare.

I had known this recording for decades. But some six years ago, with renewed seriousness and score in hand, I listened to Rains' tremulous, stentorian narration. From that moment, I was hooked. Perhaps the haunting harmonies, so strange and compelling, inspired my fascination. Maybe it was Alfred Lord Tennyson's elegant, touching narrative, published in 1864, that drew me into its internecine dramas and opulent language.

As I got to know it better, Enoch Arden began to strike me as a perfect vehicle, given its multimedia elements, for an artistic experience to which anyone could relate. Its melodic brocades and picaresque imagery are addictive, and its possibilities extend into theater, literature and film. This masterpiece would make a welcome addition to the concert hall, where conventional programming has become so maddeningly routine.

Smitten by its potential, I resolved to record it. But it required a first-class narrator, preferably one with a household name, to attract underwriters.

Partly by chance, partly by design, Michael York got wind of my idea. The classically trained Shakespearean actor, known for films as diverse as Murder on the Orient Express and the Austin Powers trilogy, wasted no time in expressing his enthusiasm and accepted my invitation to record it. Our CD was released this month on the Americus Records label.

Inspired by a true story, Enoch Arden is the saga of a young merchant marine, "a rough sailor's lad," who goes off to sea, leaving behind his wife, Annie Lee, and three small children; he is then shipwrecked on a tropical island. Rescued after more than 10 years, he returns home to the Isle of Wight to find Annie married to their mutual childhood friend, a wealthy miller.

Devastated by the loss of his family and the fear that it will no longer recognize him, Enoch keeps an agonizing vigil from a distance, refusing to let it know he is alive, even as he is dying from loneliness and an unfulfilled life. "Too much to bear!" cries wizened, graying Enoch as the music and text coincide in the heart-wrenching climax.

The story has been a Hollywood favorite for nearly a century. D.W. Griffith devoted three films to it, the last of which, made in 1915, starred Lillian Gish. In 1940, My Favorite Wife turned the tragedy into a frivolous comedy of manners, casting Irene Dunne with the always urbane Cary Grant. More recently, Tom Hanks' Castaway was another variation on the Enoch Arden theme.

The verse and music give voice to the fundamental values the work portrays: loyalty, fidelity, family, sacrifice and redemption. The musical accompaniment portrays each character and psychological situation with a unique theme.

The journey to recording this work was long and uncertain.

I spent five years in search of a record company willing to underwrite a production. Because of its unusual genre and length -- a little over an hour -- Enoch Arden resists the usual marketing strategies and begged the questions: How would it get on the radio? How would it be categorized in record stores? Who would buy it?

To help address these issues, my search for the ideal narrator began.

At first I jotted down a list of celebrated British actors, not one of whom I had any reasonable expectation of engaging. Michael York, whom I knew to be a devotee of classical music and an experienced narrator, was at the top of that list. Enoch Arden hardly demands a British narrator, as I discovered when I performed it recently in San Jose in connection with my duties on the jury of the International Russian Music Piano Competition. I was joined by Reni Santoni, an American actor best known as Clint Eastwood's co-star in the Dirty Harry films and for his recurring role as Poppy on Seinfeld. His performance of Enoch had extraordinary power and eloquence.

Still, much about Tennyson's site-specific vocabulary, awash with British culture, benefits from an Englishman's voice and sensibility.

I got in touch with my old friend Leonard Finger, a prominent casting director in New York. He was intrigued by the idea, but he was not especially optimistic, though he offered to approach Ralph Fiennes and Patrick Stewart.

But one evening last spring, I was on the phone talking to a friend, impresario Jacques Leiser. Suddenly, he excused himself to take a call from Michael York.

"You know him?" I asked, hardly able to contain my astonishment nor shake the feeling that luck was turning my way. "I'll call you back in an hour!"

With Leiser's help, I proposed the project to Michael. Within a few days, he said yes and stunned me further with his perspective on the project.

"The diverse regions that Tennyson describes were familiar to me. I had once spent a family holiday at Lyme Regis, not far from the Isle of Wight -- in a fisherman's cottage -- and had seen at firsthand 'the red roofs about a narrow wharf,' " he told me.

"I had also filmed in the tropics, once even playing a similarly shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe, another 'long hair'd, long bearded solitary.' These memories flooded and imprinted my imagination as I repeated the potent words."

Soon after Michael joined the project, Americus Records, a sanctuary for unusual repertoire, agreed to issue this new Enoch.

Michael and I wasted no time, exchanging e-mails and talking by phone. We were enthusiastic about Enoch's artistic possibilities and discovered we both thought it would benefit from the approach of a storyteller at the hearth. Far too often, we agreed, Enoch Arden faces academic readers who fail to bring it to life.

"I heard how potent and moving the mixture of words and music was, elaborating a story at once intimate and epic," the Oxford-educated actor says.

"I felt instinctively that a studio version could best bring out the delicacy and intimacy inherent in the text. Most of the characters -- even the outgoing Enoch -- speak with a tenderness that resists declamation." Unlike previous productions of Enoch, Michael decided to distinguish each of the characters' voices, reinforcing the storytelling quality we were after.

As our respective agents negotiated, we made plans to meet in Los Angeles. I have always recorded in concert halls in New York or Boston and was unfamiliar with the West Coast studio scene. My colleague Armin Watkins, formerly a professor of piano at the University of South Florida, recommended a state-of-the-art studio and a top-tier engineer. Given my experience on both sides of the microphone, I resolved to be producer as well as pianist. This meant I would broker it to a record label, assemble an expert team and coordinate virtually every detail, conceptual and practical.

Michael and I met for our first rehearsal at the comfortable Venice beach home of the project's publicist.

Tall, fit, relaxed and looking at least 15 years younger than the 60th birthday he celebrated this year, Michael is a gentle, thoughtful soul. His straightforward, unaffected demeanor might surprise those who know him from his recent movie roles, such as the demonic Stone Alexander in The Omega Code or the foppishly formal Basil Exposition in Goldmember.

His versatility made it easy to see why he took so naturally to Enoch Arden. Those of a certain age remember him as the dashing young Tybalt in Zeferelli's Romeo and Juliet; as Lucentio in Taming of the Shrew with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; as the morally ambiguous Brian, opposite Liza Minnelli in his Hollywood breakout role in Cabaret; as the revolutionary central character of the futuristic Logan's Run; and as the swashbuckling ladies man D'Artagnan in the 1973 remake of The Three Musketeers.

Our initial reading proceeded so naturally that it felt as if we were returning to the material, rather than working on it for the first time.

In the studio, where time is money, we had to work as efficiently as possible, recording the work in two days.

Michael stood in a semi-enclosed space at a short distance from the Steinway grand. "We could see each other, however, and read mutual face and body language," Michael recalls. "I don't read music well and so relied more on external cues and sheer instinct as to when to speak. As in film work, I liked the intensity and vitality that the first few takes provided."

The sessions were intense, while our co-producers -- actor Kryztov Lindquist, pianist Roger Wright and Americus Records owner John DesMarteau -- provided the objective criticism we needed. Lunch breaks provided a chance for Michael and me to get to know each other as we mused about life, our respective arts and the business that drives them. On a free day, we went to Malibu's inspiring Matador Beach, where we posed for promotional photographs against the rocky Pacific shore so much like the beach described in Enoch Arden. As onlookers stared, we tried to avoid getting too wet from the flurry of an incoming tide.

In the coming months, Michael and I will take Enoch on the road, performing it live in concert venues around the world. These include engagements at Farringford, Tennyson's home on the Isle of Wight, and at Spoleto in Italy. We have no plans to perform Enoch Arden in the Tampa Bay area, but perhaps that will change if there's enough interest in our recording. It is our hope that our collaboration will help sustain an extraordinary artistic tradition for years to come.

-- John Bell Young is a pianist, critic and recording artist for Sony Classical, Newport Classics and Americus Records who lives in the Tampa Bay area. His Web site is www.johnbellyoung.com.

ON THE WEB: For audio samples of Michael York and John Bell Young's new recording of Enoch Arden, please visit www.mp3.com/johnbellyoung. To order the CD, visit www.americuscd.com.

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