Featuring Music from:- Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 Respighi - Pines of Rome Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue Shostakovich - Piano Concerto No. 2 Saint-Saëns - Carnival of the Animals Dukas - The Sorcerer's Apprentice Elgar - Pomp & Circumstance Marches Stravinsky Firebird Suite. When it was first released in 1940, Walt Disney's Fantasia was not the initial success the studio had hoped for. Its original purpose was not only to entertain but to introduce audiences, especially younger audiences to classical music. It is to be fervently hoped that Fantasia 2000 will be more successful in this context because young people have less chance now in a heavily pop orientated mass media culture to be introduced to more serious music. Music needs listeners as well as players! The music on this album is played, for the most part by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine. (Curiously the only non-European work, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is played by the British Philharmonia Orchestra). The publicity blurb that came with the album informs that the world premiere of the film was on Friday December 17 1999 at New York's Carnegie Hall with Levine conducting a synchronised live performance with the film. This event was repeated at London's Albert Hall, and in Paris and Tokyo before a special final US performance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Millennium New Year's Eve. The film then began a four-month engagement in IMAX theatres around the world before its general release in June. The music includes abridged adaptations of music from the works listed at the head of this review. A brief 3-minute extract from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with the famous fate motif opens the film with this music used "…for experimentation in moving colour and form that advances on the surrealistic and the impressionistic." An adaptation of Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome shorn of its Catacomb Pines movement, and that nightingale in the Janiculum movement, is the unlikely backing for visuals of a school of cavorting, flying whales. Rhapsody in Blue seems to have a skating timpanist playing in an animated feature "set against the backdrop of 1930s Manhattan." Shostakovich's Adagio movement of his Piano Concerto No. 2 is a lively accompaniment to Hans Christian Anderson's story 'The Steadfast tin Soldier who is bewitched by a flirty ballerina and threatened by the villainous Jack-in-the-box. The jolly finale of Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals, is danced to by a flock of frolicking flamingos. It seems Micky Mouse is asked to encore his Sorcerer's Apprentice act from the original film - frantic broomsticks and water pails and all. Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 'Land of Hope and Glory' (celebrated by our American visitors as a favourite Graduation March) accompanies Donald Duck's adventures (with Daisy Duck) aboard Noah's Ark when confronted by torrents of water on the rampage. This special arrangement includes bits (or should I say splashes) of material from Elgar's 2nd, 3rd and 4th Pomp and Circumstance Marches for good measure. But the climax of the cartoon has a wordless choir, singing the cartoon's version of 'Land of Hope and Glory', strongly reinforced by the soaring ah ahhs of Kathleen Battle. Considering how Elgar came to detest the overexposure and misuse of his P&C No. 1, I think he would have quite enjoyed this gentle lampooning. But strictly not for the purists and those lacking a sense of humour. Finally, the excitement of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite "combines a natural design approach with an art nouveau, fairy-tale look to the animation that soars into unhindered imaginative flight as it flows across the screen" - or so says the notes. As Garry Dalkin says below it is to be regretted that such wonderful music has to be shortened to appeal to a mass audience but as far as I am concerned, if it introduces young people to music other than the pop which is relentlessly aimed at them then such treatment can be forgiven Good luck to Fantasia 2000 and may we hope it puts many young people on the road to loving good music Reviewer Ian Lace Garry Dalkin is not as enthusiatic:- Fantasia (1940) was both very much of its time, and ahead of its time. The former in that Walt Disney saw a place for a 'serious' musical animated film in an America prepared to embrace classical music in what was then the 'mainstream' - the film consisted of seven classical works (sometimes rearranged and truncated) set to animation. This was the era of Toscanni and the NBC Symphony Orchestra broadcasting to the American nation, when conductors could be as famous as pop stars are today, and in that world before 'rock and roll' Fantasia could be conceived as serious and popular, art and entertainment. It was the dawn of the animated feature film, when the format had not been set, and Disney was prepared to experiment with various content. Who knows, if Fantasia had been an immediate, rather than belated success, we might not today be stuck with the English language formula (animated films in Europe and Japan are often far more adventurous) which states that all animated features must be saccharine, sub-Broadway family musicals. However, Technicolor (still a rarity in 1940) and stereo sound (all but unique at that date) were insufficient to lure audiences to a two-hour animation favouring classical music at the expense of a singular narrative or even dialogue. As such, Fantasia was 'pure' cinema, a fusion of sound and image rarely seen but usually to be welcomed. That Fantasia was ahead of its time is evidenced by the fact that it did not find a substantial audience until its 1968 re-release - not coincidentally the year of 2001: A Space Odyssey, another virtually dialogue free visual extravaganza - when, like Clarke and Kubrick's masterpiece, the Disney film found substantial endorsement from the burgeoning hippie movement as a 'head' movie. There is one other unique feature of the original Fantasia, not in what appears on screen, but in conception. Walt Disney envisioned Fantasia as a continual 'work-in-progress', with one or more segments of the film being replaced with newly animated classical selections each time the film was re-released, so that after several years the film would be entirely different from the original 1940 issue. With the initial commercial failure of the film, this idea was shelved, not to be revived until after the hugely lucrative 1991 sell-through video release. Presumably the thinking was that audiences would no longer go to the cinema to see what they owned on cassette at home, so Fantasia Continued (as it was originally announced) went into production. However, rather than the originally announced mix of old and new, the end product, Fantasia 2000, proves to be an almost entirely new film, with only the famous Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice / 'Mickey Mouse and the broomsticks' sequence being retained from the original. Unhappily, and almost unbelievably, much of what has been discarded has not been replaced. Fantasia ran almost exactly two hours. Judging by the Classic FM radio broadcast of the UK live orchestral premiere, Fantasia 2000 lasts, at most, around 75 minutes. Hence, around 105 minutes of film has been discarded, but only an hour replaced. Are attention spans now so short that two hours is too long, or is the shorter running length simply to get more showings in a day at the expensive IMAX theatres? Whatever the reason, my complaint is not simply that the new film is so drastically short, but that so many of the pieces in Fantasia 2000 have been needlessly 'arranged' or 'edited'. The film (and album - which follows the film's running order, only omitting the spoken introductions, and presumably, whatever title music is used) opens with the '1st Movement' of Beethoven's Symphony No.5, which has been too boring all these years at 7-8 minutes, and is here condensed to a radio friendly 2:51. There is a precedent for this in the original Fantasia. Walt Disney commented, after seeing the tasteless sequence of satyrs and nymphs set to part of the Symphony No.6 (The Pastoral) that it would 'make Beethoven'. "Gee, Mr Disney, thanks a bunch for your help." And welcome to the remake. Gerswin's Rhapsody in Blue has a special, New Year offer of 50% off that troublesome 25 minute running time, while perhaps most horrific of all, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance Marches 1-4 are condensed into a 'hooked-on-Classics' montage clocking in at a sprightly 6:18. Yet even if these works had been animated in full, the running length of the film still would not have exceeded the original's two hours. As it is, The Carnival of the Animals are put out of our misery in less than two minutes. It is no use complaining that 'it's for the children' and it will introduce them to classical music, as this isn't classical music, but blatant, crassly commercial exploitation of 'famous bits' 'dumbed-down' to a pop music mentality. There is even some Shostakovich, because in 1940 Walt Disney wrote a note considering including 'something modern, like Shostakovich?' in the next version of the film. Almost 60 years later, playing painfully safe, the new filmmakers have followed the letter, rather than the spirit, which would have been to include music by a contemporary, 90's composer. There is no point in my commenting on the performances, as there are no performances on the disc, only 'Special Arrangements'. The sound is as good as expected, which rather sums-up the whole venture: a soulless exercise in technical excellence. Still, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. The last time I recall a film appending the release date to the title was Airport '79 (or '80, depending on where you live) and Fantasia 2000, the soundtrack album at least, blithely continues that precedent of mediocrity. Reviewer Gary S. Dalkin Collection: Music from the Original Walt Disney classic, Fantasia.   Leopold Stokowsky conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra.   edel 2CDs - 0105852DN Save around 22% with Crotchet The music comprises:- J.S. Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor Tchaikowsky - The Nutcracker Suite: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy; Chinese Dance; Dance of the Reed Flutes; Arabian Dance; Russian Dance; Waltz of the Flowers Dukas - The Sorcerer's Apprentice Stravinsky - Rite of Spring Beethoven - Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral") - excerpts from all five movements Ponchielli - Dance of the Hours Mussorgsky - A Night on the Bare Mountain Schubert - Ave Maria This is the original Fantasia music and my colleagues could hardly complain of short measure here! The performances are well up to the Stokowsky's best - need I say more, other than to refer you to the contents of the album listed above. Reviewer Ian Lace	Reviewer Ian Lace Gary S. Dalkin Reviews from previous months Reviews carry sales links but you can also purchase from:
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