Examiner.com interviews ‘Casablanca’ guest conductor
Examiner.com interviewed guest conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos about the “joys and challenges” of conducting a score live as the film airs above the orchestra:
Maestro Kitsopoulos hopes the audience will “sit in the concert hall and feel the sound of the orchestra wash over you, that visceral experience.” According to him, “Max Steiner, who composed the music to Casablanca and Gone with the Wind, amongst others, studied composition with [Gustav] Mahler,” which would account for the richness of scoring, particularly for strings.
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Several nice surprises await tomorrow’s audience in terms of what they will hear in rich detail with a complete symphony orchestra rendering the film score live. Maestro Kitsopoulos points to two specific highlights: “There’s the scene at the bazaar and the scene at the Blue Parrot, a bar, where the music that’s played underneath it is really quite beautiful, quite evocative of the scenes, with complete orchestration … It’s really a beautiful, lush, romantic score.”
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Whether you go to ‘see’ the music or ‘hear’ the movie, you are in for a unique experience.