Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992 TAG: 9203120244
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY CAMPBELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
Dudley Moore, the movie actor and comedian, is the latest carrot in attempts to lead new audiences into classical music, hoping they'll love it and return again and again.
Moore, surprisingly to some, is also a serious pianist.
Yes, the star of such movies as "10" and "Arthur" is a graduate of Britain's Oxford University with degrees in music and composition. Now he's making his first concert tour, which started in late February with the Baltimore Symphony.
One of his goals, says the 56-year-old Moore, "is to break the bubble of pomposity that can emerge. I think it's one thing that keeps people away from serious music. I think there's a tradition of religiosity that goes on in a lot of concerts. You don't feel welcomed.
"A lot of great composers promoted a feeling of joy in their music. We as human beings need that access to joy and optimism."
Is Moore's concert tour just a stunt? He likes the answer conductor Sir Georg Solti gave when asked whether Moore could make it as a classical pianist. "Certainly. But remember he has got 30 years practice to catch up on."
Moore will be playing Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major" and Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," with no interruptions, no jokes.
Encores should be fun. "I'm going to do some parodies I've done over the years, a Beethoven parody based on `Colonel Bogey's March' and a piece in Chopin style using English music hall songs," he says. "It seems to be one musical joke that works, combining great composers with ridiculous tunes."
In "Beyond the Fringe," the vehicle that first brought Moore attention, he put on a gray wig imitating celebrated British pianist Dame Myra Hess and played Beethoven somewhat goofily. That show began when Moore, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett were invited to put together a late-night comic revue as a fringe event at the Edinburgh Festival. They continued it as "Beyond the Fringe" for two years in London and two more years on Broadway in the early 1960s.
After that, Moore played jazz, composed music for movies and theater, moved from his native England to Los Angeles, acted in a dozen films and became a sex object, in his 40s, despite being short, dark and cute instead of tall, dark and handsome.
Recently, he says, he has become more and more interested in concertizing. So he was receptive when Martell Cognac offered appearances with American orchestras. They'd pay his fees and expenses and allot some money to orchestras for advertising for a "1992 Martell Cordon Bleu Concert Series." They'd also fund a post-concert dinner which the orchestras could use for fund raising. Francis Dolard, general manager of Martell in the United States, says they chose Moore because he's "a respected classical pianist and user-friendly."
John Gidwitz, executive director of the Baltimore Symphony, says, "We are exploring new approaches to bring classical music to audiences that may not have enjoyed it before. Dudley Moore can convey the message to a broader public that classical music offers extraordinary joys."
Moore says, "This is something I wasn't planning. I've tended to sort of drift my entire life. I've drifted into helping things along a little bit it seems."
So far, he's booked for the Seattle Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra and the "Fol de Rol," an annual classical music extravaganza fund-raiser of the San Francisco Opera Guild. Other orchestras are expected to be added.
Moore's repertory is fairly small, the first movement of Schumann's "Piano Concerto," Bartok's "Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin and Piano," sonatas by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Frederick Delius. His difficulty is memorizing.
"They wouldn't be difficult to work up," he says. "To remember them is a different matter. With chamber music it seems to be a tradition that you can play with music on the piano. One of my problems is that the tradition is to play without music as a soloist, which is slightly daunting."
Though Moore loves classical music, he doesn't love opera. "I find it a little too much," he says.
"I listened to a lot of orchestral music when I was a kid. Chamber music I got into mainly through Robert Mann, violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet. We met in 1957 in Edinburgh. He was playing a cycle of Bartok quartets. I found it very thrilling. I remember when I first heard Bartok, I had no patience with it. But the first time I heard Bartok live, by the Juilliard Quartet, I saw and heard the dedication and passion. I was overwhelmed."
Later, Moore played chamber music with Mann. He recalls the first rehearsal. "The first chord was wrong. The third was wrong. I said, `This is terrible. Isn't there a way of doing it so we can get a lot of enjoyment out of it?' " So they practiced the music in tiny pieces. "I think that is probably what has egged me on over the years, getting to grips with the incremental parts of music. The fact you practice it in little bits is a desire to be on intimate terms with the music, to sort of feel that each note has a place."
Moore, married now to Brogan Lane, was married previously to actresses Suzy Kendall and Tuesday Weld, mother of his son, Patrick, 15. At that age, he wanted to be a math teacher, Moore says. "I was good at math. Then I sort of gave it up and did music."
by CNB