Published on Jan 1, 2000
Maybe the one good thing about movies like
Fantasia is that they expose children to classical music —
quite possibly, his is the first time they ever hear this type of
music, and it is an eye-opening experience. I know my first
experience with classical music came thanks to A&P Food Store
and the
Funk & Wagnalls Family Library Of Great Music.
With the recent release of the movie
Fantasia/2000, a new generation of kids are getting the
opportunity to learn the powers of classical music. It doesn’t
matter if they don’t know who Beethoven is off the top of their
heads, but if the opening notes of his “Symphony No. 5” stick with
them, then a powerful lesson has been learned.
Of course, does the music from a film like
Fantasia/2000 carry the same punch when separated into its
soundtrack album? I haven’t had the chance to drop down to the IMAX
theater in Chicago to see the film — let’s be honest, I have yet
to get through the original
Fantasia — so I can’t speak accurately on the comparison.
(Actually, the movie opens on New Year’s Day 2000, and I’m writing
this a few days prior, so I have a good reason for not seeing the
movie.) But I can imagine that some of the staying power is lost if
you don’t see the film.
One reason, of course, is that kids (and, for that matter,
adults) will tend to tie a certain piece of music to a cartoon that
catches their fancy. We’ll all remember Dukas’s “The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice” thanks to the image of the multiplying mops carrying
buckets of water, leaving Mickey helpless to do anything else but
create more mayhem. It may seem silly, but it works – and that’s
why movies like Fantasia and
Fantasia/2000 are so important. (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”
is featured on the soundtrack for
Fantasia/2000, and is included in the movie as well.)
Other pieces are sure to be miniature educations as well. I’m
almost 30, and I think that listening to
Fantasia/2000 marked the first time I had ever heard the
entire piece “Rhapsody In Blue” by George Gershwin. If all you know
of the piece are snippets from the ads for United Airlines, you
might be surprised to hear where each little portion came from —
and, no, they don’t all run together neatly.
There were some times where I wish that the volume had been
boosted a bit in the final mix; at times, I thouht portions of
Respighi’s “Pines Of Rome” and Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite – 1919
Version” had gone to dead air. At those times, it was hard to keep
focused – and you can imagine how quickly the kids would be lost
without the visual aids on the screen.
The fact is, without the movie playing as well,
Fantasia/2000 is not going to be an album that will lock the
kids in front of the stereo for an hour. They might pop by when a
piece they remember from the movie comes on, but that’s about it.
If anything, this disc is aimed more at the adults – wait, let me
rephrase that: the young at heart – who have had more exposure to
this genre, and who can appreciate the music without needing the
crutch of having the cartoons play in synchronization.
Selection-wise, this disc is a mixed bag. I can’t say that I’d
be more open to buying discs featuring Respighi’s music, but I did
leave the disc with a new appreciation for the work of
Shostakovich, whose “Piano Concerto No. 2, Allegro Opus 102” is
featured. I guess that goes to prove that even an old dog can still
learn new tricks – and
Fantasia/2000 is a nice introduction to those new tricks, as
well as a refresher course on pieces we know.