Above: Violinist Wendy Vardouniotis and violist Valerie Tate played an exquisite arrangement of the yearning ‘Schindler’s List’ Theme for the two solo instruments and orchestra. Featured image: KPO Artistic Director and Chief Conductor Paul Terracini narrated this event and led the orcestra through seven decades of movie music. Images supplied.
An orchestral concert featuring an assortment of music written for major motion pictures is not a new concept. It is however always entertaining as a concert option, appealing to all ages and audience members with a wide range of musical tastes.
The difficult and dynamic scores rendered in such concerts remind us it is acoustic orchestral music that often fills the emotional space in the flux of films and not electronically generated or mixed sound.
This orchestra was led and narrated with scintillating detail and exciting swoop by KPO conductor Paul Terracini. This event did manage to bring the movie music concert model to quite a thrilling new level of entertainment, education and audience participation. A melange of music from classic and more recent well-known films, spanning 1942 to 2012 was heard in nice variety here.
The attractive environment of The Concourse Concert Hall, with its responsive acoustic, helped Kuring-Gai Philharmonic Orchestra deliver the well-known movie music with warm tutti tone and an exciting range of colour.
The ambience of the Concourse Concert Hall was transformed to a theatre space with backdrop projection screen. For each piece there were composer headshots and movie advertising logos or poster excerpts on display throughout each piece.
Paul Terracini’s introductions to each piece were well researched. There were always engaging musicological presentations about the nature of how composers got their break to be chosen to write main theme music or full soundtracks.
Above: KPO’s Artistic Director, Chief Conductor and composer of TV music, Paul Terracini. Image supplied.
These mini lessons for us were full of fine historical and musical perspectives, synopsis precis snippets, anecdotes about the creatives as well as popular audience participation quiz questions. Despite the great variation in the length of these spoken intros, they were provided a fitting prelude to all of the exciting soundscapes to follow.
The playing of a number of orchestral suites or medleys (‘James Bond,’ ‘Casablanca’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’) from blockbuster movies or film franchises created substantial celebrations of orchestral music in movies written by the well known composers.
These larger chunks of music from the various movies were a welcome multi-movement additions, to reflect any orchetras typical fare of larger works or symphoinies in several sections.
These compilations were a successful reunion with the familar music heard in loved films from yesteryear or recent times, regardless of whether the movie music content reached us in a separated movement structure or flowing medley arrangements without pause.
Especially compelling were the sinister, menacing tone poems from Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer as we revisited music from ‘Batman’ (1989) and ‘Batman: The Dark Knight Rises’ (2012) These were big and relentless musical moments, with soaring sentiment from the controlled KPO ensemble
It was impressive to see such moments handled with stamina, suitable accent, tempi and precision by conductor and orchestra. The complexity of the scores was rewarding to witness live sans the visual inputs encountered in the cinema.
Above: Conductor and orchestra enjoy the ovation at the end of their ‘Symphony At The Movies’ event. Image supplied.
KPO’s tight,chameleon-like morphing from one movie-house great performance of such moments were contrasted well with more intimate soundtrack excerpts from ‘ Cinema Paradiso’ the poular songs from ‘James Bond 007’ films in instrumental form and even the conductor-composer Terracini’s theme for the TV series ‘Classical Destinations’.
What was particularly endearing and worthwhile about this event’s addition to the current orchestral-movie-music-in-concert canon was the total celebration of each composer from any decade. Each prolific composer’s journey to sundtrack exposure was outlined for us and their signature sound supplied effectively in the music after the discussion.
As is often the case with programming of such concerts, we heard The Godfather Theme and also the stunning Superman March, with compelling brass choir here, the plaintive Gabriel’s Oboe from ‘The Mission’. (With KPO’s Elizabeth Nurthen providing a seamless solo).
It was exciting to hear without movie images the well known sound of the celeste from Hedwig’s Theme from the first of John William’s Harry Potter soundtracks. This inimitable, memory-triggering sound from any Harry Potter movie was given flight admirably in this concert by keyboardist Michelle Cheung.
Following Symphony At The Movies’ wide variety of classic movie moments realised with appropriate drama, the KPO entertains us next with a classic Australian pianist in collaboration with the group.
The next KPO concert takes place on Sun 11 December, once more at 3pm . Paul Terracini and the Kuring-Gai Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Prokofiev’s stunning Piano Concerto No 3.
This concert is not to be missed. This is a chance to hear KPO’s firm voice and the renowned virtuoso joining forces as they celebrate the 50th birthday of the orchestra as well as Roger Woodward’s 80th birthday, which occurs just nine days after this concert.