This weekend, the New Jersey Symphony put on its proverbial sorcerer’s hat and delivered real magic. After opening the season two weeks ago with a gala concert celebrating their 10th year with music director Xian Zhang, the orchestra went more casual for their second concert series of their 103rd season, accompanying the classic Disney film, “Fantasia.”
A touchstone of 20th century American culture, “Fantasia,” represented the highest ambitions of the nation’s culture when it premiered in 1940. Featuring visuals by Hollywood’s finest animators and music by some of the nation’s best musicians, “Fantasia” still delights today — even if you stream it on your phone on Disney+. But seeing it projected on a big screen at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank on Saturday with a full audience and the forces of the New Jersey Symphony live on stage was a thrilling event.
As is often the case with “New Jersey Symphony at the Movies” events, the conductor Saturday was Constantine Kitsopoulos. He led the orchestra through a solid, up-tempo account of the movie’s soundtrack, made up from chestnuts of the classical repertoire. The Basie is a converted cinema and vaudeville theater, so its acoustics are sometimes a challenge with the NJS comes to town — but not so with “Fantasia.” With the exception of an over-mic’d piano, the sound the orchestra and Kitsopoulos delivered was rich and nicely balanced. There were many moments it was easy to get lost in the sonic and visual splendor of “Fantasia.” (Lynette Wardle on harp sounded particularly fine in her solos.)
The film seen on Saturday was not the full 1940 “Fantasia,” but a mash-up of sequences from the original as well as the 2000 IMAX reboot, “Fantasia 2000.”
In Red Bank, the show began with abstract images flying and fluttering to the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th symphony. Next up was the cartoony “Pastoral Symphony” sequence from the original, using Beethoven’s 6th symphony as score to a playful tale set in ancient Greece. The “Nutcracker Suite” followed, with the Jersey strings and winds gracefully accompanying the dancing mushrooms and ice-skating sprites. Finishing the first half was Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” in an orchestration by the film’s original conductor, Leopold Stokowski. This is one of the simplest, beautiful sequences in “Fantasia” — the French composer’s spare but stirring melody playing beneath animated egrets in the Everglades. It was cut from the original but restored by Disney and released later. On Saturday, it was the highlight under Kitsopoulos’ baton.
The second act of the program featured the most famous segment of “Fantasia,” the one with Mickey Mouse and the magical brooms. It didn’t disappoint, nor did the 2000 segment featuring Donald Duck and Daisy Duck on Noah’s Ark. The other famous sequence from original was included here: the ballet-dancing hippos and alligators frolicking to Ponchielli’s music from his opera “La Gioconda.”
But the most stirring moments in the second half came in one of the newer creations, the artful telling of devastation and rebirth after a forest fire, set to Stravinski’s ballet music from “The Firebird.” It’s a reminder that “Fantasia,” like all classical music, isn’t stuck in the past. It’s about preserving the past but also reimagining it anew in the present. “Fantasia in Concert,” showcases this masterfully, which is why the audience was filled with people of all ages, laughing and applauding together.
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