View from the Green Room: Storytelling through music
Cinema Spectacular with the National Symphony Orchestra performed at SETU Arena.
With the Twentieth Century Fox fanfare that promises an epic night ahead of movie blockbusters, the packed attendance at SETU Arena is on its way under the baton of Anthony Gabrielle, a conductor who specialises in bringing movie classic scores to orchestras.
Gabrielle is unrivalled as a conductor of movie themes with orchestras, with some 35 scores to his credit and his love for his craft beams through in a night of fireworks.
I’m won over immediately when I hear Elmer Bernstein’s massive cinematic score from the Magnificent Seven. Memories of slappin’ saddlebags on the thighs at pointing finger-guns around corners to shoot at pesky moustachioed Mexican bandits. When they bit the dust, we had to count up to 20 before they could come back from the heavenly prairie to shoot back at us Gringos as we wound our way home through side streets and avenues from the Regina for the six o'clock tea.
Truly a score worth dying for with its iconic sweeping themes and authentic flavour of Americana folk music. It’s no wonder that it’s regarded as one of the most famous cinema scores of all times.
Gone with the Wind’s score with superb solo fiddle on Lara’s Theme at its centre has everyone in nostalgia-mood for the whiniest heroine in Hollywood.
Everything happens in Out of Africa. The film is loosely based on the true story of the arranged marriage of Danish minor aristocrat Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke and fellow Dane Karen Blixen, and in and around WWI and their re-location to a coffee plantation in Kenya. Kenya was in its infancy and the love and passion and adventures that unfold are captured in John Barry’s epic score of sweeping sunsets, blinding horizons and a forbidden love affair.
Maurice Jarre’s Lawrence of Arabia score sits in the same blockbuster world when heroes were heroes and villains were sometimes on your own side.
The score has a narrative all of its own with the romantic sands of the desert, the rumble of distant battles, the jarring chords of war and a main theme that stretches from Jordan to Syria.
When the love themes breathe romance and little lives of ordinary people, we take a breather. Holly Golightly’s (Audrey Hepburn) urban love song of Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the apartment’s fire escape is just the perfect picture of true love. Hitchcock’s Vertigo (composer Bernard Herman) sneaks in as a maybe interlude of love in a story of pursuit and revenge.
Judah Ben Hur’s white horses came marching triumphantly into our arena to the tunes of Miklós Rózsa, who incorporated Roman and Greek musical themes into his score. It’s all fanfares and pounding timps with blaring brass and explosive cymbals pounding out a triumphal march that would wake the dead. Nobody did epic like Cecil B De Mille.
Back to the Future always intrigues because the character of the bully Biff Tannen is partly based on Donald Trump, according to the film's co-writer, Bob Gale, as mentioned in IMDb. Maybe that’s why time travel has to be so noisy?
There’s turbulence and rebellion underneath the romantic scoring in the Princess theme from James Horner’s Braveheart, while Ennio Morricone’s Cinema Paradiso will always be the ultimate film score for me. The music warms but never overwhelms. It seamlessly becomes an essential part of the storytelling and, without it, the film just wouldn’t breathe.
The concert ends with a tribute to John Williams. Star troopers march all over the arena before we’re all off to Harry Potter’s Hogwart’s for three instalments of the series and a lash of everybody’s favourite alien E.T. that is supposedly an allegory of the Bible, although Spielberg always denied it. Still…small lad…descends from the heavens…born in a stable…to a mother called Mary who has no husband…grows up…works miracles…heals the sick…raises the dead…captured, tortured, dies, resurrects…and ascends into heaven. Well now…what would that remind you of? Mmmmm?
Another tip-top night from the Symphony Club of Waterford.
