Fantasia 2011

Sunday night my mother and I drove up to Hollywood for FANTASIA at the Hollywood Bowl.

Fantasia is a collaboration between Stokowski and Walt Disney where music is placed with picture animated specifically for those songs. The original movie was released in 1940 and since then it has been in a constant state of revelation and change. New songs are being added and unfinished pieces are being worked on. 

The venue of the Hollywood Bowl is incredible as it has a rounded shape and although it is an outside venue which I usually don't like this sound here is clear and strong. It was a large orchestra playing with instruments ranging from harp trumpets and standard strings.

Conductor John Mauceri did a great job leading the symphony while simultaneously relating to the crowd with stories and jokes.  He is a chancellor at UNCSA, has worked closely with Bernstein, and has conducted or performed at the hollywood bowl over 300 times.

The program started with an introduction shortly followed by Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. This was set to visuals of shapes and different colors that eluded to the same colors in the music. Other compositions included Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 the Pastoral, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. My favourites were the two that arent in the original Fantasia- Debussy's Clair de Lune and the finale- a jazz rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and a collaboration with Salvador Dali set to Armando Dominguez's music entitled Destino and of course the classic "Sorcerer's Apprentice" which is the face of Fantasia. Claird de Lune beautifully synched a story with two egrets in a marsh with a fully orchestrated version of this whispering song. I was fully enthralled and eager to hear every note of that song and watch how it matched the picture. It was great noticing how well Mauceri did at following the visuals and now I better understand how this is done using a click track like I've learned in school. The flight of the Bumblebee was such a nice surprise as I instantly knew from a few measures what this was a derivative of. The pianist was brilliant and added astounding jazz lines and chords while the visuals followed a bee flying on top of a keyboard.

Overall the performance was incredible. The musicians played beautiful and the animators captured the songs in a new light through the visuals. It's over at the hollywood bowl but I suggest anyone watch the 1940's or the 2000 version.