MAGICAL MOVIE MUSIC
Yong Siew Toh
Conservatory Orchestra
Republic Cultural Centre
Saturday (15 September 2012 )
This review was published in The Straits Times on 17 September 2012 with the title of "A night of movie music magic".
It
might seem odd for conservatory students to perform music from the silver
screen but this is a reality of the times. Film music is as close as
contemporary music gets to be performed as regularly as the great classics. And
most of these young musicians will be playing popular and commercial movie
music professionally as soon as they graduate.
So
let us not get too snobbish about film music, as much of it is more
intelligible and superior than what passes as new music today. This pleasurable
two-hour concert at Republic Polytechnic’s acoustically superb concert hall was
conducted by Jason Lai, who was not only a most personable presenter but a
committed film buff as well. He spoke at length about each of the choices
performed, and his enthusiasm was genuine and infectious.
Classics
that were appropriated by Hollywood as well as specially-composed film
scores were included, beginning with the first two minutes of Richard Strauss’s
Also Sprach Zarathustra, that
unforgettable depiction of sunrise used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. This 1150-seat
auditorium was made for this kind of music, where the brass is resplendent and
strings sumptuous.
Ennio
Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso then
brought out the tender, bittersweet textures from piano and string quartet, and
later a larger body of strings, the perfect expression of nostalgia. From
another Italian, Pietro Mascagni’s timeless Intermezzo
from the opera Cavalleria Rusticana
tugged on heart-strings, made all the more vivid by Lai’s musing about Robert
de Niro’s method acting in Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull.
Glamourous
violinist Qian Zhou made a cameo appearance, polishing off the quasi-Jewish
lament from Schindler’s List by John
Williams. Her tone was luscious as
always, even with the great familiarity of its melody, but how many people have
actually watched the 1994 Oscar winning movie? For many years, the Steven
Spielberg movie was not made available for rental here.
One
could sense that the audience belonged to a certain younger demographic by the
way they responded to certain pieces more than others. Although many
appreciated Tara’s Theme from Max
Steiner’s score for Gone With The Wind,
they only got truly excited after hearing Klaus Badelt’s music for Pirates Of The Caribbean. The tricky
jig-like rhythms and high octane propulsive drive was negotiated with enviable
ease by the orchestra, fully living up to the swashbuckling adventures of
Captain Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl on the high seas.
The
fantasy music of John Williams also drew the loudest cheers, from the
tintinnabulation of the celesta from Harry
Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone to the brazen brass of the Star Wars franchise. The multifarious
influences of classical composers were all there to admire, from Wagner, Holst,
Korngold to Walton. The saying that “While good composers borrow, great
composers steal” strikes the nail on the head for film music.
For
the record, the applause was so loud and prolonged that the entire Star Wars Main Title was encored. It was
just as good hearing the second time around.
