Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color

by Richard GinellWith his comeback secure, Frank Sinatra again took up the baton in advocacy of music between the cracks, this time with a near 60-person orchestra of Hollywood musicians and a set of 12 commissions from eight composer/arrangers. With the poetry of radio writer Norman Sickel as a guide, each composer was assigned different colors to muse upon, with Victor Young, Jeff Alexander, Alec Wilder, and Nelson Riddle receiving two each, and Billy May, Gordon Jenkins, Elmer Bernstein, and André Previn one apiece. What's bound to be fascinating for the Sinatra buff is to hear some of his famous arrangers operating outside their usual turf -- and there are a few surprises to be heard. Jenkins' "Green" is entirely characteristic of his romantic style, and May's "Purple" suddenly breaks through the opening strings into brassy Afro-Cuban daylight. Yet Riddle's "Gold" is totally unlike him, a dissonant rising crescendo that seems to depict the path of Apollo to midday (or maybe a cop on Respighi's "The Pines of the Appian Way"), while "Orange" adopts a habanera rhythm, then a waltz. Young's "White," the leadoff track, is the most enjoyable of the lot, with a fine tune and sleigh bells conjuring a winter's day, and "Black" has an even more gorgeous melody. Clearly Young's tone poems, coupled that year with his score for Around the World in 80 Days, suggest that he was rising to the peak of his powers after two decades of overwork in the film studios (he passed away later in 1956). Alexander's "Yellow" is too cute, but "Brown" is considerably more attractive; "Gray" and "Blue" find Wilder as wistful as ever but now more monumental and gaunt. Bernstein's "Silver" conjures the mood of Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier" (the silver rose); and Previn's brash "Red" is the most harmonically daring of the set. The performances are as sure-footed and assured as on Sinatra's Wilder sessions, though without the restless, on-edge quality that marked Sinatra's 1945 conducting debut. Now on CD, this once-rare album certainly casts all of its participants in fascinating new colors.