Jump to content

Hollywood in Vienna 2022: Alan Menken


Marian Schedenig

Recommended Posts

"During her speech at the end of the concert, producer Sandra Tomek mentioned that the future is unclear and they don't yet know if there will be another Hollywood in Vienna. I don't know if that is because of lack of funding or for artistic reasons, but we (the traditional group of friends who usually meet up at this (and other film music) concerts) speculated before the concert what they might come up with next, and couldn't think of anything, because after Zimmer and Menken, it seems like they've almost exhausted the big crowd pleasers that can work in this extravagant format."

 

They got to at least do Williams right? Williams music is crowd pleasing and can work with a more spectacular light show. In general, I love their concerts and hope they don't go away. I haven't seen Yared's concert, and Desplat's one was the only one I couldn't finished, but the good frequently outweighed the bad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Mephariel said:

They got to at least do Williams right? Williams music is crowd pleasing and can work with a more spectacular light show. In general, I love their concerts and hope they don't go away. I haven't seen Yared's concert, and Desplat's one was the only one I couldn't finished, but the good frequently outweighed the bad.

 

Supposedly they repeatedly tried to get him, but he declined. I fully understand why, because in the end he got to conduct two (times two) proper concerts instead of multimedia shows with little room for artistic highlights.

 

The Yared concert (which I had almost forgotten about) was unusual because it mostly went against the format's multimedia show tendencies - and ended up being one of their best concerts for it (though I'll argue that even there a "normal" concert with the music properly presented without a click and without amplification, light show, and irrelevant projections, would have been better still).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Sounds great so far? It probably could have been, but Hollywood in Vienna has been persistent in making each concert bigger and more EPIC! than the previous one. What started out with a first rate concert conducted by John Mauceri (with music by Korngold, Williams, and Goldsmith, among others) has long since become a big spectacle with a click-tracked, amplified orchestra and choir that puts more emphasis on the projections, light show, "funny" moderators, and overall EPICness than the actual music.

 

That's an issue inherent with a lot of these European film music festivals that are being done since more than a decade now, where the goal seems to create these large-crowd events with lots of spectacle, lights and glitz added, but where absurdly the musical component goes to the background rather than remaining to the forefront. I think perhaps a more toned-down approach would do a better service to the actual appreciation of the music, i.e. focusing on 2 or 3 well curated symphonic programs featuring great film music (including stuff that's not too ubiquitous) and adding a few collateral events such as public Q&As with composers and showing of films. But again, that's not something that can draw large crowds.

 

17 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

During her speech at the end of the concert, producer Sandra Tomek mentioned that the future is unclear and they don't yet know if there will be another Hollywood in Vienna. I don't know if that is because of lack of funding or for artistic reasons, but we (the traditional group of friends who usually meet up at this (and other film music) concerts) speculated before the concert what they might come up with next, and couldn't think of anything, because after Zimmer and Menken, it seems like they've almost exhausted the big crowd pleasers that can work in this extravagant format (and I can't see them return to a more settled concert setting). My only idea was an all-Marvel programme, which would probably be the first time I decide to skip the concert.

 

Besides the fact that they've ran out of big crowd-pleasing names to invite as you said, I think the other inherent (and somehow depressing) issue is that contemporary film music has very little to offer in terms of standard symphonic concert presentation, unless they will go into the film-with-orchestra format that's being done by everyone else. Going back in time and putting up concerts of classic film music probably wouldn't draw a lot of people, as current film music nerds don't care much about Golden and Silver Age composers. So I fear they've ran out of steam and that what was born as a celebration of classic Hollywood film music as conceived by the emigré composers doesn't make sense anymore in this current world of film music aficionados.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, TownerFan said:

unless they will go into the film-with-orchestra format that's being done by everyone else.

 

The Konzerthaus has its annual cycle of LTP concerts that actually predates Hollywood in Vienna by many years. Sadly, it's the polar opposite of that format, in a way, in that it goes to extremes to ensure a certain high brow justification at the expense of what lies at the heart of (good) film music: The constructive coexistence of film and music. Instead, they mostly focus on newly composed avant-garde scores for respectable films. They do always include a Chaplin film with its original score - usually Modern Times, without ever crediting David Raksin (which I consider a disqualification for a music concert at a major concert hall). I once heard Frank Strobel conduct a Carl Davis score for some film I can't recall now (something by Preminger, I believe?) that was a "proper" film score, and one highlight was Michael Nyman and his Michael Nyman Band performing his Vertov scores live to picture (prefaced by a 30 minute set of Nyman classics). They've also done Prokofiev's Ivan the Terrible (once as a series of highlights and once the full film), and I believe Alexander Nevsky. But the rest is usually newly composed music for classic silent films that seem to try their utmost to be anything but film music - meaning that the music often feels like it's not written to the support the film, not even by scoring *against* the visuals (a perfectly valid and usual approach in "normal" film scoring), but they just don't fit. I've cited my experience with Metropolis before, accompanied by a very abstract score (I forget the composer) that plastered the entire film with music so unrelated that I was never sure if the timing wasn't off by half a scene (very calm music during some dramatic sequences, sudden fortissimo outbursts in the middle of scenes where nothing of note happens), but left the dramatic climax entirely unscored. I just noticed that they have indeed also performed Huppertz' score once (I'm now sad I missed that), so it's not always bad, but there's a lot more they could do with the format to acknowledge the existing art form of film music rather than always forcefully reinventing it to be something that focuses more on distancing itself as far as possible from "commercial" film music than fulfilling its function as *film* music in any way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That reminds me of that "Disney in Concert" show at the Waldbühne in Berlin, which was mostly fine. But the presenter obviously thought, that this was all just about the songs, so he annoyingly kept talking over the instrumental parts, intros and overtures.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
5 hours ago, JNHFan2000 said:

 

 

The concert is on YouTube. Don't know if it will be deleted

 

I felt every segment had strong points. The orchestra, choir and soloist all did an amazing job.

A Whole New World and the instrumental songs from Aladdin were a standout.

As were Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Tangled & Pocahontas.

 

My favorite part though was the Hercules segment. I love gospel and this was a terrific performance.

 

2 nitpicks.

How do you have Susan Egan at the concert singing and not add I Won't Say I'm In Love to the setlist. Don't get it.

Shame there was nothing from Enchanted

 

This was totally amazing. Thank you so much for sharing! I really loved the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast suites in particular.

 

And yes, it would have been great if Enchanted (especially the track "Storybook Ending") had been performed live too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, JNHFan2000 said:

The concert is on YouTube. Don't know if it will be deleted

 

I've only watched the first 20 minutes in the background while browsing the forum, but… this sounds like an ENTIRELY different concert compared to how it sounded live. I figured it could be much better in a somewhat reasonably mixed recording, but it's actually much, much better.

 

I wonder if the mix of the recording is totally different from the live mix, or if the live version maybe also sounded better on the expensive seats and the amplification setup was just shitty for the upper ranks (which still isn't much of an excuse, because the Konzerthaussaal usually sounds perfectly fine there).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

I've only watched the first 20 minutes in the background while browsing the forum, but… this sounds like an ENTIRELY different concert compared to how it sounded live. I figured it could be much better in a somewhat reasonably mixed recording, but it's actually much, much better.

 

I wonder if the mix of the recording is totally different from the live mix, or if the live version maybe also sounded better on the expensive seats and the amplification setup was just shitty for the upper ranks (which still isn't much of an excuse, because the Konzerthaussaal usually sounds perfectly fine there).

 

Did you attend the previous concerts (Yared, Zimmer, Desplat, Elfman)? Were they the same quality?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Mephariel said:

Did you attend the previous concerts (Yared, Zimmer, Desplat, Elfman)? Were they the same quality?

 

I've been there every year since the first day. The first concert was excellent, the next few were still really good, but as I mentioned above, the whole thing has since become a franchise that focuses more and more on spectacle and epicness rather than the actual music or artistry. Yared was a notable exception - really good, and so different from what the concept turned into that I keep forgetting it even happened. For Zimmer, the show matched the musical content, which I was mostly not a fan of, to put it mildly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been watching some of the other concerts that are on YouTube over the last few days.

They are all outstanding.

I do hope they continue. If they do I would love to see a concert of the following composers some day:

Michael Giacchino

John Powell

Patrick Doyle

Thomas Newman (he really deserves an award like this)

John Williams (doubt he would attend)

Bruce Broughton

John Debney

Bear McCreary

Abel Korzeniowski

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Broughton was a regular guest during the early years. He composed the signature fanfare and contributed a lot to the symposium. I guess he either lost interest when the musical quality declined, or they dropped him because he's not famous enough.

 

Doyle was supposed to attend once (I forget for which programme, but it was around year 3-4 I think), but cancelled on short notice and was never announced again.

 

Williams was supposedly asked again and again and refused. He then came over twice to conduct the Wiener Philharmoniker. The man has taste.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.