Mantovani - The King of Strings Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Mantovani - The King of Strings Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 10, 2018

If any of you needed further proof of what an unmitigated geek yours truly is, I say without (or at least without much) shame that my heart skipped a beat when I saw this title in a huge stack of screeners sent to me by MVD. As I may have even mentioned in some previous review(s), for whatever reason I have a rather strong obsession with what I call “easy listening kitsch”, having collected tons of albums released from roughly the 1950s through the 1970s, though I have to also say at the same time that it’s manifestly unfair to call some of the amazing arrangers who appeared in the post-World War II era as trafficking in true “kitsch”. To cite one salient example of my peculiar obsession, I’ve spent untold hours trying to track down whether who I term “the elusive Terry Baxter” ever really existed. Baxter’s name appeared on a series of easy listening collections which were exclusive to the Columbia Record Club back in the sixties and seventies, but I have my doubts as to whether he (or at least his name) was ever anything other than a marketing ploy. I later found that some of the arrangements credited to him on some Columbia Record Club releases also appeared on Hugo Winterhalter albums under Winterhalter’s name, though I haven’t been able to find out if the connection was a “licensing” issue (i.e., Columbia licensed Winterhalter arrangements and put them out under Baxter’s name) or there’s some other kind of connection. Another perhaps more relevant example of my weird interest is my near lifelong infatuation with the music of a gentleman, a genius in my estimation, who could probably give Mantovani a run for his “King of Strings” sobriquet money, namely Percy Faith. While Mantovani famously made the “cascading strings” sound a staple of his hits like “Charmaine”, I have to say Maestro Faith was coming close to that particular “sound” himself, courtesy of any number of his early fifties recordings on Columbia. The back cover notes on this release bring up another connection to Faith, citing "Moulin Rouge" as one of Mantovani's big hits, and while Mantovani's version did chart (reaching Number 1 in the UK), it was nowhere near the global success that Faith's version was, since Faith claimed the Number 1 spot in sales for 1953 with his rendition. (It's also arguable that Mantovani's version owes its very existence to Faith's version, since Faith kind of tweaked Georges Auric's original theme to make it fit into a more standard 32 bar pop song format.)

Mantovani: King of Strings has a bit of biographical detail, something in my estimation it might have benefitted from exploiting a bit more, but it really does a fantastic job of detailing Mantovani’s recording career, especially with regard to his emergence as a major force as stereo first took off in the mid- to late fifties. There are a number of appealing interviews with members of Mantovani’s “legacy” orchestra as well as other talking heads, and there’s some good information on how arranger Ronald Binge managed to create a kind of “echo chamber” effect with his string writing, notably on what may still be Mantovani’s best remembered single, “Charmaine”. I’ll be just a bit of a noodge and state that while Mantovani did some of his own orchestrations and arrangements, he regularly farmed out material to folks like Binge or Roland Shaw, while Maestro Faith always did all of his own work, with the possible exception of some early choral arrangements which may have been done by the choral leader Ray Charles (not the pianist).

There's some slightly clunky editing utilized here, along with at least a couple of "WTF" uses of stock footage, but a lot of the archival material featuring Mantovani himself (much of it culled from his 1959 television series) is wonderful. Archival recordings, both orchestral and spoken, featuring Mantovani help round out the informational side of this engaging documentary.

Mantovani - The King of Strings Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mantovani: King of Strings is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FilmRise and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1 (some archival video hovers closer to Academy Ratio). Not to sound like a broken (Mantovani?) record, but as I've stated many times with regard to documentaries cobbled together from a variety of source materials, there's an understandably wide variability in image quality here. Some of the older archival video is pretty blown out, with insufficient contrast and therefore minimal detail levels. The late fifties television fare looks surprisingly spry most of the time, and there's some color footage of Mantovani whose provenance is not clealry delineated which also looks fairly good, all things considered. The contemporary interview segments look sharp and well detailed throughout.

Mantovani - The King of Strings Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unfortunately this release only contains Dolby Digital 2.0 audio, and with regard to some of the archival material, notably quite a bit of the television series snippets, there's noticeable distortion and crackling, albeit slight at times, especially in the upper registers. The interview segments all sound fine, and even the archival audio of Mantovani speaking sounds decent.

Mantovani - The King of Strings Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

A number of musical moments from Mantovani's television series are included as supplements. These all unfortunately suffer from some slight distortion, per my comments above:

• Summer Time in Venice (1080p; 3:26)
• The Melba Waltz (1080p; 2:21)
• Charmaine (1080p; 1:20)
• Cara Mia (1080p; 2:49)
• As Time Goes By with Petula Clark (1080p; 3:24)
• Tonight with Edmund Hockridge (1080p; 2:27)
• Ol' Rockin' Chair with the Hi-Lo's (1080p; 2:02)
• How Deep is the Ocean with Vic Damone (1080p; 3:42)
• My Foolish Heart with Carol Carr (1080p; 3:20)
• The Blue Danube (1080p; 3:22)
• The Agnes Waltz (1080p; 3:00)

Mantovani - The King of Strings Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Even if you don't have any particular interest in "easy listening" in general or Mantovani in particular, there's some rather interesting information here about arranging and recording techniques which may spark interest in some potential viewers. I personally found this a wonderful piece helping to give some backgrounds on one of the better remembered "light music" conductors of his era. Technical merits are decent for those considering a purchase.