Mason Bates
'
Philharmonia Fantastique - The Making of the Orchestra
, in this, its 23-minute audio form, might be seen as a modern-day counterpart to
Benjamin Britten
's
A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra
, but its primary function is as a teaser for a multimedia work of the same title, fusing animation and music; its real ancestor is the 1940
Walt Disney
film
Fantasia
. The multimedia presentation comes with sterling credentials in the form of this endorsement from
John Williams
: "In the art of marrying music with animation,
Philharmonia Fantastique
is the biggest step forward since
itself."
featured one of the top American orchestras of its day, the
Philadelphia Orchestra
under conductor
Leopold Stokowski
, and
Bates
' new work is here rendered by one equally good, the
Chicago Symphony
. If conductor
Edwin Outwater
is not a marquee name like
Stokowski
, he gets wonderful results from the orchestra in this colorful score. Sample the beginning of the fifth movement, "The Brass," where the powers of the famous
brass section seem fully undiminished. This passage also points to another source of publicity for
: the sound, which earned a Best Engineered Album Grammy award in 2023. The brass seem to purr but not to lose their resonance, and there are wonderful sonic moments throughout.
has a busy performance schedule lined up with various orchestras, but for the music itself, it would seem difficult to top this premiere release. ~ James Manheim