Audiences can hear the movies like never before as Philadelphia Orchestra embraces film scores
The focus on the silver screen has to do with the specialized art of film-scoring, but also the pursuit of much-needed ticket sales.
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s pandemic era brought two years’ worth of changes, though with a surprising constant: Along with Beethoven and Brahms, movies in concert are pervasive — in numerous ways.
Besides having An American in Paris (Feb. 17-19) and The Princess Bride (Feb. 24-26) shown in concert with live orchestral accompaniment at Verizon Hall, there’s also an ongoing commitment to Hollywood icon John Williams, who just turned 90. Williams will conduct some of his best-known film music plus his new Violin Concerto No. 2, performed by Anne-Sophie Mutter in a special April 19 gala. His orchestrations for Fiddler on the Roof, the classic Broadway score that carried over into a hit film, will be performed by the orchestra March 3, 5 and 6.
Film music without film used to be pops concert fare. The orchestra’s upcoming concentration of film presentations is something different — almost an unofficial festival that reveals the creative synergy between sound and image. “There’s nothing like the experience, so when we come to think about the choices of film music programs, we really do begin with what is going to sound fantastic,” said Matías Tarnopolsky, orchestra and Kimmel Center president and CEO.
“Most academics don’t view it as an art form, but the audiences just love it,” said composer/conductor David Newman, who has led numerous films in concert and will be on hand in Philadelphia to conduct The Princess Bride, composed by Mark Knopfler. “I don’t know how many films can work like this in a live setting, but there are a lot of them.”
The surprise is the films that are less than viable. One of Newman’s dream projects is to revive the great Alex North score to the 1960 Spartacus, but the orchestral requirements are huge and the film is well over three hours — too long for symphonic concerts. Then there’s The Wizard of Oz, which he conducted recently. “Every bar is a different tempo,” said Newman. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Box office for live-to-film orchestra concerts can be boffo, even record-setting — an attractive prospect as orchestras look to lure pandemic-weary audiences back to live concerts. When the Philadelphia Orchestra did Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at the Mann Center in 2016, demand was so high ticket sales were stopped due to capacity concerns.
The Philadelphia Orchestra went on to do four Harry Potter films at the Mann between 2016 and 2019, with audiences that have ranged in number from 7,800 to 9,700 — huge for an orchestra concert.
Currently, though, sales for both An American in Paris and The Princess Bride are slow — aside from the Saturday night screenings.
Beyond the traditional film possibilities, Tarnopolsky sees the orchestra’s series going into more serious realms with selections along the lines of the Philip Glass score to the documentary film Jane. Silent films now have newly created scores by noted composers. An entirely new medium is being explored at the Curtis Institute of Music: In the spirit of the immersive touring Van Gogh exhibits that engulf spectators in floor-to-ceiling visual images, the Curtis Orchestra was filmed over three days playing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
The project is conducted by an orchestra music director, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Osmo Vänskä, which is somewhat unusual for film-oriented projects. Ludovic Morlot is one of the few symphonic conductors who is trafficking in this world, and will conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra’s An American in Paris, whose score is unusual for having a self-contained, uninterrupted ballet.
Any lapse in coordination can break the movie’s spell. Maintaining that often requires hybrid conductors, such as Newman, who know their way around the classical world but also understand terms like “dip and die” (a way of turning down the sound on the original soundtrack to make way for live music).
Amid the two rehearsals allotted to each presentation, conductors often use “streamers” — a special screen cue system invented in the 1930s by Newman’s father, longtime 20th Century Fox music director Alfred Newman. Also, the sound of the original soundtrack was often achieved by a standard orchestral seating arrangement that was specific to each studio. Capturing that isn’t always possible. “You just have to have the ears,” said Newman. “There are a lot of people who can technically do this, but somebody who knows what it’s supposed to sound like can do much more.”
But the 1987 Princess Bride, for all of its musical grandeur, presents a particular problem: It never had an orchestra to begin with. Mark Knopfler created the soundtrack on the Synclavier, an instrument once considered sort of a miracle synthesizer — a “tapeless studio” — that was superseded technologically in the 1990s. A score, on paper, never existed. So the music had to be reverse engineered — re-created for orchestra “mostly by ear,” said Newman.
Ironically, the older the film, the easier it’s likely to be. The Kimmel Center has hosted silent films with semi-improvised scores played on the Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ. Composer Stewart Copeland (ex-member of the rock group The Police) has turned the 1925 silent version of Ben-Hur into an event in venues from Chicago to Luxembourg. “The fact that it’s a silent film means I can blaze all of the way through without having to dodge sound effects and dialogue,” said Copeland said in an interview on his website.
A more curious reclamation was the previously lost 1938 Orson Welles film Too Much Johnson: The expansive electric guitar score by Gary Lucas accompanied slapstick comedy improvised by Joseph Cotten and Arlene Francis amid the stark warehouses of Depression-era Manhattan. Only fragments were found because the ever-cash-strapped Welles couldn’t afford to pay all of the lab bills for the film development. However, the sketchy quality was fused into a surreal whole by the wizardry of Lucas’ score, which was premiered in 2017 — not at some cinema festival, but at the experimental new-music venue Roulette in Brooklyn.
The Scheherazade Project at the Curtis Institute is slated to run at the school from April 29 to May 1. Curtis CEO and president Roberto Díaz wonders if it could be seen in large theater lobbies as an add-on feature for live Curtis orchestra concerts, though any given space would have to accommodate considerable projection hardware.
The idea was hatched amid rolling concert cancellations of the pandemic. “The feeling was that if we can’t have public performances, we can we do something that would create a different experience that’s as meaningful as possible and can live beyond the performance,” said Díaz. Shot just before omicron hit last year, the filming required 14 technical personnel, 48 microphones, 26 cameras, and 20 lights, all under the supervision of Curtis’ senior vice president of digital strategy and innovation Vince Ford, whose resume includes producing Live from Lincoln Center telecasts.
Newman expressed great excitement over the Scheherazade possibilities. But in the meantime, he has one plea for his present situation with live symphony orchestras: “More rehearsal.” And maybe Spartacus?
Information on the Philadelphia Orchestra’s film concerts: philorch.org, 215-893-1999. The Curtis Institute’s “Scheherazade” Project, April 29-May 1, is being presented free, though reservations are required at tickets@curtis.edu or 215-893-7902.