INTRADA Announces:
THE HAWAIIANS
Composed and Conducted by HENRY MANCINI
INTRADA Special Collection Volume 124
Producer Walter Mirisch had a huge hit in 1966 with Hawaii, an adaptation of James A. Michener’s sprawling multi-generational novel. At 960 pages, Hawaii proved impossible to comprehensively adapt even within the original 189-minute running time of the original film. After its box office success and seven Academy Award nominations, Mirisch developed a sequel that covered the book’s chapters he was unable to adapt in the first film, thus becoming The Hawaiians.
For The Hawaiians, composer Henry Mancini was charged with both the sweep of the film’s gorgeous locations as well as the drama of its characters. Mancini did something unusual for feature film scoring at the time. In addition to composing for a large traditional orchestra, he wrote for authentic Asian instruments as well, integrating that material with his score rather than deploying them in an occasional source cue. His music captures the drive, ambition and ruthlessness of Whip Hoxworth (Charlton Heston) and differentiates the Chinese cultural background of Nyuk Tsin and Mun Ki from the Polynesian roots of the Hawaiian natives. Like Bernstein, Mancini opens his Hawaiian music with gathering forces of native-style log, stick and shaker percussion, but Mancini adds an insistent pulse of strings and trombones before introducing his lush, romantic main theme. The composer manages to conjure up the feeling of the islands in just his first three notes, dizzyingly orchestrated and consonant—“shallow” as the warm Pacific waters surrounding Hawaii, with a subtle second note pitch bend and swirling harp glissandos.
For this premiere CD release of The Hawaiians, Intrada presents the score on two CDs. The original United Artists stereo album masters survived in perfect condition and are presented on disc two, in the same sequence as the original UA LP. The first CD presents the complete session tapes from the composer’s own personal mono-mixdowns masters of the entire recording sessions. They survived intact, including every overdub, solo and ethnic ensemble performance as well as every orchestral scoring cue, allowing Intrada to assemble and present a premiere of the actual film soundtrack performance, complete with over a half hour of music not featured on Manicini's original album. Listeners will find a terrific array of dramatic new scoring cues and thematic variations inviting comparison with what was re-recorded for the album.
The Hawaiians begins in the 1800s and focuses on two characters and their families: Whipple “Whip” Hoxworth (Charlton Heston), an ambitious seaman and landowner, and Char Nyuk Tsin (Tina Chen), an immigrant among a shipload of Chinese laborers brought to the mainland aboard Hoxworth’s ship. Hoxworth returns from his shipping journey to find that the ship’s owner, his grandfather Rafer Hoxworth, has died and left Whip’s stake in the vessel and the shipping line to his tightfisted and devout cousin Micah Hale (Alec McCowen). Hoxworth elects to go into competition with Hale and works with an alcoholic British geologist named Overpeck (Don Knight) to dig a deep fresh water well on his land and eventually establish himself as a kingpin in the island’s burgeoning pineapple trade.
This release is limited to 1500 units.
INTRADA Special Collection Vol. 124
Retail Price: $24.99
AVAILABLE 3/2/2010
For track listing and sound samples, please visit
http://store.intrada.com/s.nl/it.A/id.6519/.f
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