The Wizard of Oz Concert Suite (1939)

Editor Note
The original orchestra scores and parts to The Wizard of Oz were the victim of a purging of the studio’s vast music archives when a new owner concluded they were taking up space and sold them by the pound, in black garbage bags, for use as landfill, where they reside today under the Mountaingate Country Club and a section of the Santa Monica Freeway. Fortunately, the short scores (with indications of orchestration) were kept and are the basis of this restoration by Steven Bernstein.

Many brilliant arrangers and orchestrators at MGM worked on The Wizard of Oz, principally Herbert Stothart (who composed much of the underscoring around the songs by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg). In addition, his team included Georgie Stoll, Murray Cutter, George Bassman, Leo Arnaud, Paul Marquardt, and Conrad Salinger, all of whom had a hand in this music. Stothart would go on to win the Academy Award for his work on the soundtrack, beating Max Steiner, who was nominated for his epic score to Gone with the Wind in 1939.

The concept for this orchestral piece, inspired by my colleague Tommy Krasker, was to tell the story of The Wizard of Oz as a tone poem, allowing audiences to hear its glorious sounds played by living musicians. Its world premiere was in 1991 and is featured on the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s first album, Hollywood Dreams (Philips Classics), and is linked with the very first season of a brand-new orchestra made up of Hollywood’s finest studio musicians. That recording was made in the very same room in which the MGM soundtrack was first heard —and the last time it was played by living musicians — in 1939.

— John Mauceri
Founding Director, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra
(2022)