 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From NY Philharmonic press release on its coming season:
THE ART OF THE SCORE: Film Week at the Philharmonic KUBRICK’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Complete Film with Score Conducted Live by ALAN GILBERT HITCHCOCK! Conducted by CONSTANTINE KITSOPOULOS ALEC BALDWIN To Serve as Artistic Advisor Later in the Season: PIXAR IN CONCERT — Music and Clips from All 13 Films
The Orchestra will present THE ART OF THE SCORE: Film Week at the Philharmonic, offering two programs that highlight some of the genre’s most fascinating uses of music. On September 20–21, 2013 (just before the 2013–14 season officially begins), Alan Gilbert will lead the Philharmonic in the score from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, performed live as the entire film is screened, marking the first time such a program has been performed in the U.S. Celebrated for its technological realism, innovative and Oscar-winning special effects, and bold use of music, the film brought worldwide fame to both Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and the music of Ligeti, including Atmosphères, Lux Aeterna, Requiem, and Aventures. In one of cinema’s most memorable images, a spaceship floats serenely through space to the strains of Johann Strauss, Jr.’s The Blue Danube. Silence is also a key component of the film; the Orchestra will remain onstage for the entire screening, highlighting Kubrick’s strategic and eloquent use of both music and silence in storytelling. On September 17–18, 2013, conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos will make his Philharmonic debut leading Hitchcock!, a program celebrating legendary director Alfred Hitchcock and the music written for his films by composers including Bernard Herrmann, Lyn Murray, and Dmitri Tiomkin. Like Kubrick, Hitchcock ingeniously used music to build suspense and enhance drama. Clips will be shown from films spanning the director’s career, including Vertigo, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest, and the evening will feature a scene from Hitchcock: By Himself with Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette, the theme music from the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. THE ART OF THE SCORE will also include two panel discussions. One panel will explore the use of music in Hitchcock’s and Kubrick’s films and will include filmmakers, directors, composers, and historians, moderated by Alec Baldwin, who will serve as artistic advisor to this initiative. A second panel, produced by the World Science Festival, will include renowned composers, neuroscientists, and filmmakers discussing the uniquely powerful role of music in shaping the narrative flow and emotional impact of film.
Later in the season, May 1–3, 2014, the Orchestra presents Pixar in Concert. The program will illustrate the studio’s history through movie clips and music from its 13 films so far, from Toy Story to Brave. Highlighting the importance Pixar places on film scoring, the concerts will include music by the four composers who have worked with the studios: Randy Newman, Michael Giacchino, Thomas Newman, and Patrick Doyle.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Jun 15, 2018 - 6:19 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
alexp
(Member)
|
Lincoln Center is doing it again starting Friday, September 14th, 2018...the film's 50th anniversary.
https://nyphil.org/concerts-tickets/1819/art-of-the-score-2001-space-odyssey
Here's a New York Times article of Lincoln Center's 2013 concert of this program:
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/arts/music/new-york-philharmonic-plays-2001-a-space-odyssey.html
With Feet on the Ground, the Orchestra Travels Through Space.
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
New York Times, September 23rd, 2013, Page C5
When Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, announced a new initiative this past January, “The Art of the Score: Film Week at the Philharmonic,” he said he thought the programs could be exciting and enjoyable. The idea was to screen some classic films at Avery Fisher Hall and have the orchestra play the scores live.
But “exciting” and “enjoyable” hardly do justice to the thrilling experience of watching Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” on Friday night at Avery Fisher Hall, with Mr. Gilbert conducting the Philharmonic and the chorus Musica Sacra in live performances of the works by Gyorgy Ligeti, Aram Khachaturian, Richard Strauss and Johann Strauss II that constitute the sound track of this 1968 film.
These specific works were crucial to Kubrick’s cinematic vision. He initially commissioned a traditional film score, but in postproduction decided to go with classical pieces, including the visionary Ligeti scores, taken from existing recordings. There is almost no music during the extended scenes with dialogue aboard the space plane en route to an American outpost on the Moon, or during the Jupiter mission aboard Discovery One, when HAL 9000, the ship’s computer, slowly, and ominously, malfunctions.
Instead, Kubrick used the pieces to evoke mystery, evolutionary forces and the cosmos itself during extended stretches of the film in which there is no dialogue. So, having the great New York Philharmonic and the excellent Musica Sacra choristers (directed by Kent Tritle) performing this music live made the evening the ultimate way to experience “2001.”
It began with Mr. Gilbert conducting Ligeti’s “Atmosphères” for large orchestra, an experiment in sustained cluster chords and what the composer called “micropolyphony,” comprising thick, textured webs of contrapuntal lines. This piece accompanied the opening credits to the film and led into the first segment, “The Dawn of Man,” when we see a tribe of early hominids foraging for food and fighting over a fresh water pool in the African desert.
The music most associated with “2001” is the two-minute introduction to Richard Strauss’s tone poem “Also sprach Zarathustra,” inspired by Nietzsche’s book. This music is meant to evoke the essence of triumphant human evolution. When Mr. Gilbert and the orchestra finished the final, brassy, glorious flourish, the audience erupted with cheers and applause. Like the previous film night earlier last week, devoted to music from Alfred Hitchcock movies, this event packed the hall with exactly the demographic of younger, diverse people American orchestras are trying to reach.
Another inspired Kubrick idea was choosing Johann Strauss’s waltz “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” to accompany the balletic movements of the floating space stations and transports. In Strauss’s day, couples spinning to this waltz on the dance floor of a Viennese ballroom imagined themselves transported to some fantasy life of grace and elegance. In the film, it is the space stations that move with poise and effortlessness, while inside them, we see stewardesses awkwardly coping with weightlessness as they carry trays of unappealing food (anyone for liquefied carrots?) and strain to keep their balance, wearing floor-gripping shoes. Mr. Gilbert and his players had a wonderfully stylish and breezy way with this familiar piece.
It was profound to hear the Musica Sacra singers in the Ligeti works the “Lux aeterna” and the Kyrie from the Requiem (a landmark piece that the Philharmonic has never performed). This haunting, rapturously strange music came across as beyond mere realms of pitch and rhythm.
The ovation at the end was long and ardent. Maybe this film night will entice some newcomers to take in a symphonic program without a film. How about a complete performance of Ligeti’s Requiem?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Alec Baldwin wrote very touching obits for both Barry and Jarre in the Huffington Post.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
