Lehman Engel

composer and conductor of plays, television, and film. He also conducted many Broadway musicals, both on stage and on records.

Work in theatre, television and films

Engel worked in a variety of positions on television specials. He was composer and conductor of the music for the famed 1954 television production of Shakespeare's "Macbeth", starring Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson, but did not work on the 1960 remake starring the same two actors. He was conductor of the first (and so far, the only) television version of Leonard Bernstein's "Wonderful Town" (1958) (TV), as well as, in the preceding years, of "Twelfth Night" in 1957 and the TV version of "The Taming of the Shrew" in 1956. [imdb name|id=0257111|name=Lehman Engel] He also conducted the music for the Broadway musical version of "Lil' Abner", as well as the 1959 motion picture adapted from the show.

Lehman Engel also composed the music for the 1939 Broadway revival of "Hamlet", starring Maurice Evans, as well as for the original 1948 stage production of Maxwell Anderson's "Anne of the Thousand Days", starring Rex Harrison and Joyce Redman. In 1965 he served as the musical director for the Broadway production of La Grosse Valise(composer Gerard Calvi, lyrics by Harold Rome)

The BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop

Engel founded the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, a workshop in New York for musical theatre composers, lyricists and librettists.

Lehman Engel worked as musical director for the St. Louis Municipal Opera for a number of years before moving to New York to conduct on Broadway. He won 6 Tony Awards, and was nominated for 4 more. The category for which he won and was nominated no longer exists.

Recordings

Engel also conducted the first 3-LP version of Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess", a 1951 Columbia Masterworks Records album which was highly acclaimed, but did not, as advertised, really feature the complete opera. The mono recording, starring Lawrence Winters and Camilla Williams, was eventually released on CD. It was the longest "Porgy and Bess" album made up to that time (129 minutes), and would remain so for many years, until it was superseded in the 1970's by two complete recordings of the opera which both won Grammys.

Between the late 1940's and early 1950's, together with Columbia Records executive Goddard Lieberson, Engel conducted what were then the most complete recordings of several classic Broadway musicals of the past, many of which were appearing as albums for the first time - among them "Girl Crazy" (with Mary Martin), "Oh, Kay!" (with Barbara Ruick and Jack Cassidy), "Babes in Arms" (again featuring Cassidy and Mary Martin) and "Pal Joey (musical)" (with Harold Lang and Vivienne Segal). All of these were studio recordings, not original cast albums. The "Pal Joey" recording was so successful that it actually led to a major, long-running revival of the show in 1952, with the same two stars who had appeared on the album.

He also conducted what were then the most complete recordings of "The Student Prince", in 1952, and "Show Boat", in 1956.

All of these recordings (except for Engel's "Show Boat") were eventually issued on CD and were classics in their time.

As Author

Engel also wrote several books on musical theatre. One of them, "The American Musical Theatre: A Consideration", was perhaps the very first book to discuss in detail the writing of a Broadway musical, the elements that went into it, and the art of adapting "straight" plays into musicals.

Engel was close friends with Pablo Picasso. He also mentored Stephen Flaherty.

References