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Donald Macleod talks to composer Peter Bernstein about his father, the award-winning Hollywood film composer Elmer Bernstein, beginning today with his father's early years in Hollywood.

Born in 1922, Elmer Bernstein created the music for more than 150 films. His big break was one of Hollywood's biggest pictures, Cecil B DeMille's swan song, the 1955 biblical epic, "The Ten Commandments". At the same time as working on that enormous canvas for DeMille, Bernstein was composing the first in a series of groundbreaking jazz-infused scores, "The Man with the Golden Arm". He went on to write the music for the Hollywood adaptation of Harper Lee's classic novel "To Kill a Mockingbird", westerns that include The Magnificent Seven, surely one of the best-known title themes in the history of cinema, before he became the go to composer for John Wayne. His scores for action adventures include "The Great Escape" and a moving depiction of the inner life of a prisoner in "Birdman of Alcatraz". Nominated on numerous occasions, he won an Oscar for "Thoroughly Modern Millie". In the 1980s he delighted younger generations of cinema goers with scores such as "National Lampoon's Animal House", "Ghostbusters" and "Airplane!", before deciding to make a return to more serious drama. Projects with Martin Scorsese included the film of Edith Wharton's novel "The Age of Innocence", and he also created a remarkable portrait of the artist Christy Brown in "My Left Foot". His last score, for which he received a final Oscar nomination, was for Todd Haynes's "Far from Heaven" in 2002. He died just two years later in 2004.

Donald Macleod marks the centenary of this gifted and versatile film composer in conversation with Peter and Emilie Bernstein, two of Elmer Bernstein's children. They offer a fascinating insider's view to the film music industry alongside a personal portrait of their father.

Classically trained as a concert pianist, within five years of arriving in Hollywood Cecil B DeMille was to give Elmer Bernstein the chance to write the music for The Ten Commandments. The veteran director would also support the young composer when Bernstein found himself accused of having "left-wing sympathies".

The March from Stripes
The Hollywood Studio Symphony
Elmer Bernstein, conductor

Prelude to The Ten Commandments
The Paramount Studio Orchestra
Elmer Bernstein, conductor

The Ten Commandments (excerpts)
The Plagues
The Exodus
The Red Sea
The Paramount Studio Orchestra
Elmer Bernstein, conductor

To Kill a Mockingbird
Atticus accepts the Case / Roll in the Tire
Royal National Scottish Orchestra
Elmer Bernstein, conductor

Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra for two Christophers
II: Reflections
Christopher Parkening, guitar
London Symphony Orchestra
Elmer Bernstein, conductor

The Man with the Golden Arm
Frankie Machine
The Fix
Molly
Break up/Flight/ Louie’s/Burlesque
Shorty Rogers, flugelhorn
Milt Bernhart, trombone
Shelly Manne, drums
Elmer Bernstein

Producer: Johannah Smith