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Music from the Movies, Sheldonian Theatre
This was the first concert I'd been to where the players actually wore the programme. Last Saturday the Oxford Chamber Orchestra offered several Caribbean pirates (one with parrot), a jaunty Robin Hood, a Hogwarts prefect with a genuine Gryffindor tie (acquired via the internet, today's equivalent of an ethereal delivery). Then, just before we began, there was an irruption of Batpersons who chased round the theatre a few times then settled at the back among the extensive percussion section, where they were very fully employed all evening, sharing the bangers, crashers and tinklers very amicably between them.
This was the orchestra's fourth Music from the Movies concert, conducted and introduced in a very full Sheldonian by the affable John Beswick (white tie and tails for him). It was in two senses rather a bitty performance; the items were a collection from films of 1938 on, and, though two of them were called Suites', they were an assembly of cues or themes composed as backing for visual episodes.
Narrative mood music maybe, but some distinguished names featured; Korngold's 1938 Robin Hood (Errol Flynn, anyone?), Lionel Bart's lyrical string theme for From Russia with Love, lots of John Williams. Rota's score for Fellini's 1954 La Strada gave us more of the circus than of its star, the waif-like Giulietta Masina, Fellini's wife.
Sometimes the composer's needs couldn't be met - thus, a trumpet replaced the harmonica in the falling four-note theme for Midnight Cowboy, and was very successful in recreating that lonely, melancholy film. Indeed, many solos, all taken by orchestra members, were for those difficult, exposed instruments - horn, trombone, trumpet - and were admirably done.
Movies can't be melancholy, though, and it was the sweeping melodies and pounding percussion that dominated in the main title pieces for Batman, Pirates and the resounding conclusion, Star Wars. The enthusiastic audience had its money's worth in a very upbeat evening.
6:15pm Wednesday 30th May 2007
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