Something for the weekend. Whenever I need cheering up, or simply an energy boost, Franz Waxman’s Ride to Dubno always does the trick. It was written for the movie Taras Bulba (1962) and the video clip below is the amazing sequence where the song is played as the Cossack army gathers on its way to Dubno.
Here is a magnificent duet rendition of the song:
And here is an orchestral version:
I consider myself quite the film connoisseur, and yet you never fail to reference movies I’ve never heard about. Add another to my growing list of movies I need to find.
It was a film so good Dave, that Tony Curtis was not horrible in it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuE_mLEH40M
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1rlitz
LOL. Exactly. A NYC accent doesn’t suit certain character roles.
Wonderful music and Yul Brynner was great. I’ve always admired him for recording an anti- smoking PSA as he was dying of cancer. It was aired posthumously. His remains are buried at Russian Orthodox monastery in France.
I’m awaiting Penquins Fan take on the veracity of the film’s Polish/Cassock storyline. Supposedly there’s not much resemblance to Gogol’s novel which irritated Brynner. Couldn’t find much online about Dubno; however, the photos of the fortress are impressive.
The movie gives a romantic take on a very dirty, and bloody, conflict.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmelnytsky_Uprising
In addition to the music, the horsemanship is impressive. I wonder if 21st century Hollywood could find sufficient numbers of horsemen to film such action.
I also like to listen to von Stuppe’s “Light Cavalry Overture.”
Interestingly, light cavalry, e.g., Tennyson, the Light Brigade at Balaclava, were equipped with light horses while the heavy brigade rode heavy animals. Where possible, individual troops (equivalent to an infantry company), within cavalry squadrons(battalions)/regiments were assigned similar color horses for battlefield identification and unit cohesion/esprit de corps.
l’audace l’audace toujour l’audace.
When I was a kid, listening to the radio was the first choice, then cassette albums, then the mix tape. If you were to tell me then, that something the size of a cassette would be able to carry thousands of songs (for some, infinite with data/streaming plans) make phone calls, play games, be a GPS and look up info, all while being able to connect to headphones without a wire, I would have thought you mad, MAD I say! So my iPhone is my big fat mix tape. And I have it set to auto update and be totally random. I basically play songs with 3-5 stars (I use 2 stars for songs I have, but really don”t care to listen to, and one star for album tracks). The three star songs (about 3000) get played once or twice a year, four star once or twice a month, and 5 star 3-4 times a month. Once it gets played, and I sync my phone, it gets taken out and a new one put in its place. My wife is Dutch, and she has about 1000 songs in my iTunes, and when we travel together, I have a playlist that plays my four and five star songs and her songs alternating between the two (with some Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and Monkees thrown in belonging to neither of us.)