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Allan Gray: Stairway to Heaven (piano version)

2,562 views · Published 10 November 2014 · 3:57 · Indexed 10 November 2026

Channel: PSearPianist · 2014 · Music

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*** Note: this is not the Led Zeppelin song of the same name ***
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This is the published (1947) piano arrangement of some music from Gray's score to the Powell & Pressburger 1946 film of the same name (released in the UK as 'A Matter of Life and Death').  After the introduction is a section with a steady moving bass - this is the 'escalator theme', which depicts an escalator linking the Earth to the afterlife in the film!

'Allan Gray' was the stage name of Józef Żmigrod, a Polish composition pupil (in Berlin) of Arnold Schoenberg.  He moved to Britain around 1936 to escape Nazi restrictions on his work, and established a career in the UK as a film music composer.  According to the Wikipedia article on him Żmigrod took up his stage name to avoid the disapproval of Schoenberg for his music for German stage productions!

You can read more about Gray here: http://bit.ly/1ugtSbm .  It is of course possible that some of the material in this piece was contributed (as suggested in the article) by Walter Goehr and Robert Farnon.

Thumbnail image created with Wombo Dream ( t.ly/zhJa ).
#polishmusic #stairwaytoheaven 
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