Wednesday, March 6, 2019

The Magic of the Movies: Music and Picture Aped




Jerry Goldsmith's brilliant score for the 1968 classic SF motion picture, Planet of the Apes, was performed live-to-picture in London in 2015. A friend of mine flew there for a few days to take in the performance. He was impressed with the attention to detail. As parts of the orchestra that day: Brazilian cuíca drum; slide whistle; shofar; and steel mixing bowls (you heard that right).

My jet-setting friend said the performance was authentic and exciting. Even better than he thought it would be.

Since I hadn't been able to take a seat next to my film score mate, he alerted me recently to the above video. It is from a concert by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra from June of 2017 televised by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. (I wish the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would do programming like that instead of running and rerunning rubbish like Schitt's Creek.)

Program notes: the music cue is for the sequence where Taylor (Charlton Heston) escapes from captivity only to be chased about Ape City by the gorilla forces. The piece, "No Escape", climaxes right after the human fugitive ends up in a large net and growls in frustration to his captors: "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" That small 'pause' in the music before the crescendo is there so Heston can do his thing. Classic picture and sound.

2 comments:

Jawsphobia said...

Why take a jab at Schitt's Creek? It's actually a good show. And CBC is putting some new content on a site called Gem. They are doing interesting things. This concert footage is readily available - as you see - on youtube anyway, regardless of where it came from. I've listened to the same Danish orchestra do a Star Wars tribute and a few other things.

Simon St. Laurent said...

My point is that the CBC could do programming similar to this. Trust a European broadcaster, a national one at that, to do something interesting and off the beaten path.

Actually, I've been working from home and have Schitt's Creek on the telly, and have formulated an opinion based on the few I've seen. I've long liked the two stars but a new format might work better for them. Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara do their best, absolutely.