Keir Dullea in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Source: Supplied
THE Sydney Festival has mounted several of these film-with-music events, where musicians on stage perform the music for a film classic screening behind them: live Philip Glass soundtracks to Koyaanisqatsi and, more recently, Dracula, being notable examples.
The choices have been generally inspired, and this year's event - Stanley Kubrick's science fiction art film 2001: A Space Odyssey triumphantly accompanied by the massed forces of The Sydney Symphony and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs under conductor Andre de Ridder - may have been the most inspired yet.
The reasons are not too hard to find. 2001 is not only one of the most daringly innovative and ambitious films to have emerged from the US studio system, or anywhere else for that matter, but Kubrick's startlingly original use of music is indelibly linked to its long-standing influence, an essential part of its genius.
We may take it for granted now, but when Kubrick decided to scrap the original score commissioned from film composer Alex North, and substitutied pre-existing recordings by Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss, Gyorgy Ligeti and Aram Khatchaturian, this was decidedly not the way things were meant to be done.
You could be forgiven for wondering if a live performance from such a large conglomeration of musicians and singers would break the spell required for the movie to work for the audience. And admittedly, the lighting for the music stands on stage, while low, made the players dimly visible and slightly reduced the intensity of the image on screen. For the Ligeti sections, the choir members stood, drawing attention to themselves.
Yet mercifully these visual distractions proved brief and minor. Gazing upwards occasionally was to be struck by the remarkable consonance between the ceiling of the Opera House Concert Hall and the images on screen, a series of circles and spheres (connoting humans) and rectangles (the alien monolith). These geometric patterns form a kind of visual music that serves to counterpoint the live score and vice versa.
It helps enormously that the film's musical sequences were designed to play out without dialogue, achieving an effect of pure cinema. Also noticeable was the film's effective use of silence, which helped the music stand out in relief.
The performances of choir and orchestra under de Ridder were flawless, soaring and impassioned - something not to be taken for granted, given the complex dissonance of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna and Atmospheres, music that miraculously suggests the infinite, the unknowable.
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Sydney Symphony and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. Sydney Opera House. January 24.
The performance is repeated in Sydney tonight. Then it will be performed at the Adelaide Festival, with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Ziegler and Adelaide Chamber Singers, March 8 and 9
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