Conjuring Cinema Sensations

Concert Review

By Bryce Christensen

     Cinema music, explained the composer Patrick Doyle, should “be able to, away from the picture, conjure up the same sort of feelings and images that it was meant to on a screen.” Conjuring up a range of potent cinema feelings, an array of stunning cinema images, the Orchestra of Southern Utah (OSU) devoted its February 25th Concert to “Romantic Film Classics,” so extending the season’s theme of Romanza by connecting it to a distinctively modern artistic form. Under the passionate baton of OSU assistant conductor Carylee Zwang, the OSU musicians indeed kindled in the pandemic limited audience of music lovers who gathered in Cedar City’s Heritage Center such vivid movie sensations that many felt they’d been magically transported to a celluloid-screen theater. 

     A few elitists might sniff at the idea of a symphony orchestra playing movie music, supposing that such music lies outside of the realm of high culture appropriate for such an orchestra. These misguided souls forget that in premodern times, some of the greatest of composers have written music inspired by the popular entertainment of their day: consider, for instance, Georg Benda’s Romeo und Julie, based on Shakespeare’s play about star-crossed lovers or Hector Berlioz’s King Lear Overture, inspired by the Bard’s tragedy about the rashest of kings. Of course, great composers have long woven unforgettable instrumental music into entertainments based largely on non-instrumental music--on drama and dance, for instance. Such artistic fusions have given music lovers not just the high art of opera and ballet (Mozart’s Magic Flute and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake) but also the more popular art inspired by folk songs and folk dances (as in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol and Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies). In moving into the world of movie music, the Orchestra of Southern Utah was not deviating from its proper musical mission

but rather was laudably extending some of the most fruitful of musical traditions.

     The first of the evening’s musical numbers came from James Horner’s poignant theme forTitanic. Appropriately, this number fused instrumental and vocal music. Vocalist Tamara Reber carried the solo, with the Cedar High School Madrigals and Gateway Preparatory Academy Concert Choir providing background harmonies, at some points joined by the orchestra, at some

points singing a capella. Performing wordlessly, the vocal performers under Zwang’s baton rendered a deeply moving kind of keening, conveying aurally the theme the movie dramatized: even when cruelly separated from a beloved by catastrophe, the heart goes on in the spirit of love remembered. The effect of this orchestral-vocal number could only be called haunting. Though many in the live and cyber audiences no doubt remembered James Cameron’s movie, others may actually doubtlessly appreciated a chance to focus fully on the music that Horner composed, performed with rare vocal and instrumental power.

     With the evening’s second number, the audience left behind Hollywood’s evocation of oceanic disaster and moved to a world of Sherwood Forest derring-do in Michael Kamen’s soundtrack for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. In this number, as in other compositions performed this evening, the audience shared in the heart-pounding pulse of high adventure, but also felt the hints of tender love. Listeners relished the musical energy OSU delivered as a tribute to the boldest of noble outlaws but also detected the hints of that marvelous outlaw’s passion for Maid Marian.

     Not a nefariously corrupt Sheriff but rather the seemingly implacable barrier of time stands between the lovers in Somewhere in Time. But that barrier seems less daunting to anyone who has felt the sublime magic of John Barry’s soundtrack for this film (enriched by inspired borrowings from Rachmaninoff). The soul-melting notes of this film’s music dissolve all doubts about the power of love to surmount even the barrier of many decades. With praiseworthy sensitivity of expression, Zwang and the instrumentalists under her direction drew listeners into the time-defying enchantment that ultimately unites Elise McKenna and Richard Collier. 

      The challenge to romantic love is not chronological but ethnic in Arthur Laurents—Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story, Shakespeare’s tragic story of intense but doomed love relocated in New York City. Capturing the variegated episodes of this popular Broadway play converted into a blockbuster movie, Bernstein’s West Side Story Suite brings together the buoyant hope of “Something’s Coming,” the sunny optimism of “America,” the disturbing tensions of “The Rumble,” and the piercing love of “There’s a Place for Us.” The range of tempos and emotions traversed by this suite challenges the musical versatility of both director and instrumentalists: listeners marveled at the poise with which Zwang and the orchestra met this challenge, compellingly capturing the cadence and tone of each segment.

     Carrying listeners from all-too-real ethnic conflict to the exhilarating realm of fantasy, Superman: Man of Steel pits the beyond-human strength of Kal-El (renamed Clark Kent) against threatening alien powers, while also entangling him in the very human emotion of love for a charming woman (Lois Lane). Listeners thrilled to both the fantasy strength and the amorous vulnerability of the quintessential superhero, both pulsing in the beguiling soundtrack composed by Hans Zimmer and rendered by a conductor and an orchestra fully alive to all of the cinema excitement of this box-office hit. 

     Laden with the sobering weight of real bloody history, the older movie Spartacus challenged theater-goers with the violence of a valiant but ultimately futile slave-revolt. In his Spartacus Adagio, composer Aram Khachaturian invites listeners to share in the brave resolve of a determined gladiator, while also stirring in listeners an intense empathy for this courageous fighter’s love for Varinia, a serving woman who wins the heart of an unconquerable rebel.  Though the ending of the film is dark, Khachaturian’s plangent measures offer hope--the hope embodied in the son who will survive the brutal suppression of the revolt Spartacus leads. Though Hollywood naturally embellished the events, listeners to OSU’s version of this Adagio could intuit in the stirring cadences of the soundtrack OSU the profound ancient human realities beneath the film embellishments. 

     Dispelling all dark historical realities, Zwang and the orchestra leaped in the concert’s final number to the feel-good melodrama of Star Wars. In the martial strivings of John Williams’s delightful soundtrack, listeners heard the irresistible promise of a happy ending, as plucky Resistance Fighters overcome the Empire’s evil storm troopers, a happy ending even more satisfying because of the budding love affair between Princess Leia and that wise-cracking rogue

Han Solo. No need for deep historical reflections here--just pass the popcorn and enjoy the movieland ride that OSU offers its listeners. 

     And what a ride the evening this evening’s performance provided--soundtracks from seven movies in slightly over an hour of utter transport! Zwang, the vocalists, and the instrumentalists all deserve high praise for giving fresh substance to Patrick Doyle’s insights into the power of movie music to deliver all of the feeling, all of the images, of the films those soundtracks originally accompanied. And though this was not a free concert, the cost of admission was greatly reduced through the generosity of the concert sponsors: the Sorenson Legacy Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Power Foundation. Whether they were among the listeners who enjoyed the privilege of physical attendance on the 25th or among those who later shared the experience of the cyber-recording, music lovers had reason to give thanks for the artistic skill of the evening’s performers and for the philanthropic magnanimity of the sponsors, who together made seven movies into one irresistible yet affordable musical adventure.