November is off to a busy start, so I'll express my nostalgia for the bygone days of September and October (when I had a lighter teaching schedule and was a little younger) with this recording I made late one October night after a recital. This wistful little waltz by Dick Hyman was written for the soundtrack of Woody Allen's 1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo - which is, perhaps, my favorite movie of all time. It is an almost perfect film, lighthearted and clever but also touching and sad. Set in 1935, there's plenty of fun music from the era, but Hyman's Carousel Memories is the music that stays with me (ok, also this). The film celebrates the escapism that movies provide while also critiquing the emptiness at the end of such escapes. Although the music was written in the 80s, it expresses nostalgia not only for the 30s, but also for hopes and dreams which turn out to be unrealistic.
Anyway, if you haven't seen it, you should! And if you only have 60 seconds, try these Carousel Memories. (You may hear the version used on the soundtrack here. You may hear Hyman playing it live and then riffing on it here.) I don't have a published score, so my little version is something I worked out, though I've realized it differs in some details from both of the links posted parenthetically. It has always sounded to me like something which could almost fit into one of Robert Schumann's collections such as Carnaval, Davidsbündlertänze, or Scenes from Childhood. This is a commentary both on the elegance of Hyman's work and the forward-looking expressive world of Schumann. In other words, both Hyman and Schumann should be flattered by the comparison (if either were to care about my opinion).
More from this casual fall series of leftovers...
