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CONCERT: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Antwerp, December 2017)


bollemanneke

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Well, before launching into the review of tonight’s concert, I must say that this year has been great, score-wise. Harry Potter 1 in March, Hans Zimmer in June, Titanic in October, James Newton Howard in November, and then this one, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, not to mention all the great La-La Land Records releases. I hadn’t watched or listened to any Harry Potter since March, unless you count one-minute highlights, because I always find it increases the enjoyment: there’s nothing more exciting than hearing these magical scores performed live after nine Potter-free months.

 

This concert took place at the Sportpaleis again, so I was a bit worried that I might find the sound intolerable after hearing Titanic in a vastly superior hall. The first tram we took on our way to the Sports Palace was one of these newly-built contraptions that drives very fast, but also produces sounds that make you wonder whether you’ll arrive in one piece. I did, though a woman on the second tram briefly tried to make a grab for my white cane after mistaking it for something to hold on to. As with all the other film concerts, there were lots of French-speaking students present as well. We then entered the station, followed by lots of people and guided by the smell of fast food and other more questionable scents -- they really should allow smoking in public spaces again.

 

Once there, we were greeted by two enthusiastic ticket checkers at the entrance who both eagerly told us to ‘enjoy it!’ That certainly was infectious. When we had taken our seats, I could have sworn that some people who I also heard in March were sitting quite close to me again. That was rather weird. Other than that, nothing of interest can be said about the audience, except that there was one girl proudly boasting about the number of awards John Williams has received.

 

By now, the first problem became blatantly obvious. These concerts were not selling well at all. A little more than half of the seats were filled (around 8,000 people were there, I think), but there were so many empty ones that they had decided to remove everyone from the highest rows and give all of us the best possible places, so it was a large group of people leaving many sections of the ‘palace’ unoccupied. Oh, so that’s why our tickets said ‘replacement ticket’ when we got them this week… A simple coke cost 3 euros and ‘Cinema Sportpaleis’, as the presenter who never ever seems to change his text calls it, also didn’t bother to print any kind of leaflet. There were, however, scarves that were apparently selling well.

 

Just like last time, the Creating The World of Harry Potter documentary (Williams’ section) was playing. Are they going to play this piece every year? If not, they should urgently do extended interviews with Doyle, Hooper and Desplat because there is no way they can fill the same amount of time with the limited material that’s available to the public at this moment. After that was over, I heard the choir and orchestra rehearse Moaning Myrtle’s entrance for a while and they seemed to be having fun with the cue too.

 

The same guy as always announced the concert and we were kind of hoping he would mispronounce ‘Chamber of Secrets’, but it was not to be. He also announced lots of other concerts, but Harry Potter 3 wasn’t among them. Before that, many ads for upcoming events had also been shown, from Scottish music evenings to Laura Pausini. The Belgian National Orchestra would be performing with Fine Fleur again and unless my memory is deceiving me, our orchestra has a new concert master every time. The conductor had come all the way from LA (was it John Beal?), which kind of surprised me because I thought Justin Freer was the only person conducting the Potter concerts. A brief YouTube search told me that the Belgian HP1 concert wasn’t conducted by Freer either, but by an Englishman who will have to remain unnamed. Anyway… He introduced himselfand the event, praised our orchestra and choir and literally gave the exact same speech about us having to applaud and all that as the HP1 conductor. I might have liked it, had it not sounded so terribly rehearsed. Now, I know this conductor has other things to worry about (he’d have plenty of reasons in a moment), but if your organisation insists on sweeping the audience away, try and prepare yourself for that. When the Englishman did it for Harry Potter 1, he was so enthusiastic that I completely forgot about how annoying clapping during the music might be. Then the conductor asked if there were Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, RAAVENSCLAWS or Slytherins in the hall. Cringe, cringe. But in his defence, the audience’s enthusiasm made him laugh and feel more at ease, so when he was saying they encouraged house pride, I finally got into it.

 

With the speech out of the way and the tuning done (I still love that part), Hedwig’s Theme would start things off. Or so I thought. Instead, something went horribly, horribly wrong. The celesta started playing all right, but the notes were one big mess. It wasn’t even a question of a higher or lower octave or a wrong key, it was just… Even in my wildest dreams, this didn’t sound remotely like Hedwig’s theme at all, it sounded more like someone jabbing at random keys or introducing a bloodcurdling horror movie. I was so confused that I turned to my brother for an explanation, but he didn’t get it. Then, the orchestra joined in and it dawned on me that they had actually started playing the film. When Harry’s Wondrous World came up, some of the woodwinds were playing the right material, but at the wrong moment, though they adjusted themselves in an orderly way. The same could not be said about the celesta. I’ve been told that no one noticed the error and that even the conductor didn’t react, but that celesta didn’t play for the next quarter of an hour. One wonders how moronic those spectators are when no one reacts when Hedwig’s Theme is mutilated beyond recognition at the start of a Harry Potter film. With the celesta gone, the Dursley escape cue started with one long cello note and no theme whatsoever and Errol had to deliver his post accompanied by strings only. What I found very odd, however, was that Magical Household did have celesta. The problem was fixed afterwards, but he/she still played the wrong octave during the Parselmouth conversation and quite frankly, lots of it (but not everything) sounded like the celesta from the original recordings. Can anyone think of an explanation for what I just described?

 

On to other performance remarks. Magical Household sounded, well, magical. Other cues that were brilliantly performed included Mail Delivery and naturally, Fawkes’ material made for great listening as well. A very surprising and welcome performance of Ginny Gets Snatched made that entire scene so much more poignant too, especially the violins accompanying the rush to the staff room were completely new for me. But nothing came close to the truly amazing symphonic spectacle that became Quidditch. You could just tell the orchestra was enjoying it. The percussion gave it their all, the strings and brass were magnificent… in short: they totally nailed the entire sequence.

 

Several recurring patterns were rather interesting. One of those was the fact that very soft music was played quite loudly, which led to lots of rediscoveries, such as the Borgin and Burke scene, the Chamber of Secrets ‘lecture, the ending of Dumbledore’s caution (funny strings for that portrait line), Myrtle’s tale etc. I would even go so far as to say that it transformed some scenes: Fawkes’ rebirth became a stunning event and even though it had no celesta either, those violins and violas nearly turned it into a religious moment. Petrified Hermione was equally moving.

 

The second performance choice was also made for the HP1 concert and basically meant that whenever brass/woodwinds play legato on the recordings, the live performers play staccato. Lucius’s theme is so much more badass when you hear it performed loudly on trombone in that way. The same thing happened when the woodwinds had their solo moment in Fawkes Heals Harry, which, again, was a pleasant surprise, when the horns played the B section of Hedwig’s theme after Harry leaves the diary and when Harry’s dormitory is trashed (woodwinds).

 

Now, enough performance praise. Not everything was handled that well. Apart from the prologue debacle, the violins had trouble playing the frantic flying theme during the Dursley escape and another stand-out moment came during the beginning of Train Station. For some reason, the woodwinds forgot to join in and the entire orchestra slowed down as one because of that, but once the winds had joined, everyone sped up again. All this happened in a very orderly fashion, but I found it slightly annoying all the same. I will, however, admit that this orchestra is extremely good at playing on regardless of what’s (not) happening. The violins at the end of Petrified Colin were slightly off-key and the same piece of music was performed too slowly twice, namely the material when Harry and Ron flee for Malfoy when they’re Crabbe and Goyle and when Neville alerts Harry about his trashed dormitory. Then, when Harry was in the diary, I heard no trumpets during Aragog’s entrance. But the highlight of bad performances was, without a doubt, the Basilisk fight. No one played off-key, but there just was no coordination whatsoever. It sounded as if everyone was bravely soldiering on, but the percussion missed a few beats, then the trumpets didn’t play that triumphant E-flat passage during the final showdown and the brass section as a whole kept slowing things down. Again, when this happened, everyone followed suit in a very structured manner, but you (or maybe just I) could tell things were not going well.

 

Oh, and I haven’t even talked about the intermission. It takes place after Dumbledore dismisses Harry and it should be a rather uneventful part of the evening, but it wasn’t. When Dumbledore sent him away, the orchestra played that tracked Halloween/Arrival at Hogwarts music from HP1 again. Then there was a 25-minute break. When everyone had returned to their seats and the orchestra and choir were back, the film started playing without sound and the orchestra didn’t do anything. Then the film stopped. Then it started again. Then it stopped again. That caused some laughter, but it wasn’t over yet. Suddenly, the unamplified voice of that artificially cheerful conductor caught my ears, vaguely ringing out from the depths of the hall: ‘Gryffindors…! Hufflepuffs…! Ravenclaws…! Slytherins…!’ Some of us clapped and laughed, but nobody understood what was happening and some people started debating whether it was a Europe-America-related issue. Then, after another minute’s silence, some people started rhythmically clapping for no apparent reason. Finally, things got underway again. They played the triumphant part of Escape from the Dursleys, just like in HP1 and then had to segue directly into Christmas Break. Or rather, only the strings did. They had to play that theme twice before the rest of the orchestra finally joined in: they didn’t stop, just elongated that part.

 

Now, a word about the sound mix. This time, the emphasis was not on the strings, so picking out individual violins wasn’t possible anymore. Now the woodwinds were at the forefront, but that was equally interesting. I had no idea there were so many clarinets in that library music, for instance. To the best of my knowledge, no bass clarinet is audible anywhere throughout the entire recording. But why, oh why, did they have to mess up the choir? If you hire about twenty angel voices from Fine Fleur, amplify them, for God’s sake! They were hardly audible most of the time, you could only really hear them when the orchestra was playing rather quietly (just before the diary takes Harry back in time), so no epic choral part in the sword fight, just feeble hints. Oh well, I suppose I should be glad they didn’t turn down the volume of the orchestra to emphasise the film dialogue, like they did in Return of the King. The orchestra always took center stage, no doubt helped by the removed sound effects from the film track, which was incidentally played in stereo, but lacked the thump at the start of the Chamber reveal in the toilet.

 

Then, a bit about the score itself. Everything was played exactly like it appears in the film, so no unused music restored or anything like that. The only differences I noticed were the following: the recorders in Diagon Alley were played one octave higher by piccolos, the train station-flying car transition is somewhat different because the film mutes the G major chord that opens the Flying Car, here they excluded the B major chord that ends Train Station. The music that underscores the pudding smashing to pieces was more clearly audible, the clarinet part in Eat Slugs had a C-sharp note added to it again, like in the live Norbert music and when Voldemort’s theme appears in the anagram scene, there was no harp leading up to it, just timpani and brass playing that theme without the dramatic ‘intro’. The Invisibility Cloak music was performed on the same somewhat different but great synth effect they used in HP1, but this time it was in the right key, though it also ended on a major D chord before the stone motif kicks in during the diary scene, which made it sound too upbeat. For the end credits, they only performed Harry’s Wondrous World, but not the whole piece: they literally performed the part that appears in the film, including the sped-up insert, but nothing else. The credits just continued to roll without music. Not nice. Oh, and that music when Hermione explains the word mudblood is so dramatic, it’s not a Hitler speech…

 

The applause and reactions throughout the entire concert sounded rather muted most of the time, probably because of the smaller audience. Lots of reactions were predictable, of course: Dobby’s entrance (the noble music during his being freed was obliterated), Ron, Dumbledore and McGonagall’s entrance, Filch… I joined in for Mrs Weasley, Hermione, Snape and Myrtle (someone recently called her the Jar Jar Binks of the Harry Potter world and I’m not having it!). A few reactions were less predictable: When Lockhart first appeared, the film audience cheered while we booed, Colin was greeted by undisguised exasperation, some people loved the Dursley and spiders escape, the Quidditch victory, the Chamber reveal in the toilet, the destruction of Riddle, the moment when Fawkes brings the hat and heals Harry and even Sprout got a cheer, but best of all, someone screamed when the cat got attacked. The younger people also totally lost it after the ‘all exams have been cancelled’ remark. My personal favourite, however, happened during a quieter moment: when Harry read Gryffindor’s name on the sword, a woman behind me gave a timid but joyful little squeal and when Dumbledore replied that only true Gryffindors could pull that sword out of the hat, a woman far away in the front replied with that same happy whoop.

 

So, how best to summarize the entire event? I’m very glad I went, but it could definitely have been better, there’s no doubt about that. The inevitable family conversation before and after this concert did not help improve the atmosphere either: they somehow think I’m responsible for low ticket sales and high prices and keep pointing out smugly how badly these concerts sell. ‘Why don’t you just buy the soundtrack?’ Bless them. I wish they would stop hiring the stupid Sportpaleis and move to the Queen Elisabeth Hall instead: they’d have to sell less tickets, the prices would be cheaper and the sound would be infinitely superior. What’s more, I’m also told that the Sportpaleis isn’t even the best place to watch a film, so I honestly don’t understand why they insist on using that venue. Right now, it doesn’t look as though we’ll be getting HP3 at all. If they do decide to perform it, I sincerely hope they’ll hire the English conductor again, choose another concert hall, use Fine Fleur to their full extent, tune the celesta in time and rehearse the music properly. And I’m sure the fact that we can’t post any remarks in the official Facebook event for the first time ever is a complete coincidence too.

 

If any Gryffindors, Hufflepufs, Slytherins or Ravenclaws have any questions, help will always be given at JWFan to those who ask for it.

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  • 1 month later...
10 hours ago, Jay said:

Wow sounds like quite a mixed bag of a show!  Hopefully when it finally comes to New England, the orchestra has all kinks ironed out!

 

Why do you think the same orchestra that did the Belgian concert would perform in New England?

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