Examiner.com reviews ‘Casablanca’
Richard Carter of Examiner.com reviews the NJSO’s live performance of the “Casablanca” score:
Saturday evening NJPAC’s Prudential Hall filled nearly to capacity. Some fifty musicians from New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (NJSO) took the stage beneath a vast projection screen. Conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos mounted the podium and led them in a Pops concert, playing Max Steiner’s film score in a synchronised screening of the 1942 classic “Casablanca.”
If you only recall the Herman Hupfeld tune “As Time Goes By” from the film, that may be because the leading characters make such a big deal of it. Yet the presence of a live orchestra made the audience aware of just how much more music figures into “Casablanca.” Max Steiner set other existing numbers, like “It Had to Be You” from 1924 (music by Isham Jones, lyrics by Gus Kahn), and “La Marseillaise,” France’s national anthem, recurrently from the brilliant overture.
But the real discovery was the original music by Max Steiner himself, atmospheric passages aptly energising populous scenes or softly supporting quieter moments with tender melodies.