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Isaac Schwartz (born 1923) is a Ukrainian composer whose chief reputation has been made by composing for over 100 film scores, including those of legendary director Akira Kurosawa. Schwartz can be included in the "neo-traditional" school of 20th century composers--that is, his music is tonal and is unabashedly predisposed style-wise to late 19th/early 20th century classical music (Prokofiev, Barber, Rimsky-Korsakov), though he has little in common with his contemporaries Arvo Pärt and Sofia Gubaidulina. This is cinematic music in the great, underrated film-score tradition of Miklos Rosa and Max Steiner: writing for strings pitched to airy, transparent tones and sonorous depths; reflective-sounding woodwinds with a mournful, contemplative European folk quality; martial brass; rumbling, ominous timpani and distant percussion. The sixth movement of 'Yellow Stars (Holiday in The Ghetto)' has a defiantly cinematic "heroic" quality that would not be out of place in an Errol Flynn adventure or a John Ford Western (and that's meant in the most complimentary manner). 'Dursu Uzala' (for the film of the same name) has a more "modern" feeling to it--its orchestration is sparer, percussion is used in an impressionistic, post-Stravinsky fashion and has elements of the subtle repetition of melodic fragments (more Bernard Herrmann and Michael Nyman than Alfred Newman). At one point Prokofiev's 'Lieutenant Kije' is referenced. At once introspective and effusive, this CD will appeal to those who think they don't write soundtrack music like they used to.
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