It was raining. Not pouring or pelting down cats and dogs, mind you, nor merely misting between the sky and ground, but raining, and raining constantly, the type of never-ending rain that wears one down as effectively as a nagging partner might. Speaking from the sunny hindsight of two days after the concert, where Sydneysiders have finally had the chance, after – according to news reports – 12 straight days of wet weather, to see the sun back in the sky and prove to the newest generation that there is in fact a warmth up there and it’s not just a myth that the old tell their young, I can safely say that the precipitation had a somewhat deleterious effect on the audience – kids and inclement weather do not mix with happy results. Which is to say, in a rather roundabout way, that this Fantasia concert of the Sydney Symphony’s had probably the noisiest audience this critic has ever encountered.
It wasn’t just a more-than-usual amount of coughing, you see, but a ceaseless murmuring from the back of the circle (though one assumes that other places in the Concert Hall were less than silent, too). One could hear children talking and, sometimes, parents shooshing them, although the ratio of shoosh-to-talk was woefully unbalanced. Packets of food were crackled on occasion, too. Fidgeting was the order of the afternoon. Infantile crying seemed to have been ordered especially. And bronchial clearances were more common than a peasant in a pig trough. In the end, however, there was so much subdued noise that it all sort of blurred into one for most of the time, and ended up like the omnipresent drone of an air-conditioner. The orchestra, too, for the most part was quite loud, so everything basically worked out in the end. Still.
Benjamin Northey, conductor of the recent Dame Edna with the Sydney Symphony concert, was to return not only to conduct once more, but to conduct, among others, some pieces that he had performed with the gigastar herself, such as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the Grand Finale from Carnival of the Animals. But this time there was a giant screen behind him, upon which was to be shown excerpts from Disney’s Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, those two animated films with no sound save for a musical backdrop. It hearkened back, in a way, to the Sydney Symphony’s performance of the newly-restored Metropolis, the silent German film – one feels that the live-orchestra-as-soundtrack works best when there’s no dialogue to the movie (unlike for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, though those were still great experiences). And it was, for the most part, entirely what one expected.
There are two criticisms to be made, however. First, the opening piece of the afternoon – the first movement from Beethoven’s fifth symphony – was slightly out-of-sync with the images shown (abstract lights would burst through clouds a quarter of a second after the orchestra had hit a fortissimo, for instance), though towards the end of the piece Northey regained control. (The conductor worked off of a small screen right in front of him, which displayed the bar number and tempo, so perhaps the synchronisation issues were the fault of the projectionists, rather than first-piece jitters.)
Second, the screen itself was marred on many occasions by a tear in the middle. A screen tear, for those of you who don’t know, is not a rip in the white projection-screen, but a term to describe when one frame of an image is displayed on part of the screen earlier than it should be, so that two frames are mixed together instead of showing a single one. As two successive frames are not all that different, the effect can be negligible, but animated effects such as quick lightning and other fast movements exacerbated the problem, so that there appeared to be a line down the middle of the screen. It was only a niggling issue, but an issue nonetheless.
Apart from that, however, the concert was rather good, with the music comfortably supporting the stories played out on the screen. Fantasia (and Fantasia 2000) needs no critical comment, as the animation is superb, especially in the latter film which the critic was not familiar with. Hence, apart from the aforementioned quibbles, one can’t imagine a better way to experience Disney’s magic.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
Fantasia
Sydney Symphony
Benjamin Northey (conductor)
BEETHOVEN – First movement from Symphony No. 5 (Fantasia 2000)
BEETHOVEN – Symphony No. 6, Pastoral: Merry Gathering of Country Folk – Thunderstorm – Shepherd’s Song (Happy and thankful feelings after the storm) (Fantasia)
TCHAIKOVSKY – Dances from the ballet Nutcracker: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy – Chinese Dance – Dance of the Reed Flutes – Arabian Dance – Trepak (Russian Dance) – Waltz of the Flowers (Fantasia)
DEBUSSY – Clair de lune (Moonlight) (Fantasia)
STRAVINSKY – Highlights from the ballet The Firebird: Round Dance of the Princesses – Infernal Dance – Berceuse – Finale (Fantasia 2000)
PONCHIELLI – Dance of the Hours from the opera La Gioconda (Fantasia)
DUKAS – The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Fantasia and Fantasia 2000)
ELGAR – Pomp and Circumstance Marches (Fantasia 2000)
RESPIGHI – The Pines of Rome: The Pines of the Villa Borghese – The Pines of the Janiculum – The Pines of the Appian Way (Fantasia 2000)
SAINT-SAENS – Grand Finale from Carnival of the Animals (Fantasia 2000)
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
29 June
