Film Symphony Orchestra – TARAB Tour – Valencia – October 2024 [Concert Summary]
The Film Symphony Orchestra conducted by Constantino Martínez-Orts, performed on October 20 in Valencia, Spain, offering one of its many concerts planned within the tour 2024-2025: “Tarab”.
Our colleague Frederic Torres attended the concert and leaves us a great summary exclusively for SoundTrackFest.
TARAB TOUR. Valencia, 20 October 2024
The new tour of the FSO, under the incombustible command of Constantino Martínez-Orts, begins a new project for the 24-25 course, and does so under the title of TARAB, a word of Arabic origin, which as explained on the website of the Film Symphony Orchestra, and Martínez-Orts himself in his first address to the public (one of the many that, as usual, he makes during the concert explaining each and every one of the titles chosen for its interpretation, displaying a commendable pedagogical will), comes to describe ‘that state of ecstasy or emotional trance that can be reached by listening to music’.
And although the concept has evolved since it began to be used, according to the website, it was during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when it became popular among the public. However, far from being limited to Arab culture, the FSO CEO’s idea is that this musical essence can also be provided by many world music, and that any musical form that manages to move audiences should also be considered Tarab, as in the case of jazz and flamenco, and now also film music.
So, with this introduction, the FSO’s ideologist (as he defines himself on the aforementioned website), returns to concoct a new medley of themes from different periods and conditions, a magic formula that has led him to consolidate his project after more than a decade of uninterrupted touring (only the pandemic managed to temporarily abort the booming rise of the FSO). By now, this project is well known throughout Spain, where it will take this Tarab until the summer of 2025, having started in Madrid, where they will repeat in December 2024. They will also return to Valencia on January 11, after the apotheotic full house of the present event, which took place on Sunday, October 20. And the fact is that, with his peculiar and controversial style, Martínez-Orts has undoubtedly won the loyalty of an audience that year after year waits expectantly for the new FSO tour, despite the fact that along the way, as is understandable given the success obtained, other similar projects have arisen that try to follow in the wake of the original, with greater or lesser success.
The program was as follows:
So after an impressive introduction with the award-winning Dune, Oscar-winning score by the factotum Hans Zimmer, in which there was no explanation whatsoever, something perfectly calculated to the millimeter by Martínez-Orts in order to hold the audience to the seats, with the connivance of the protagonist intervention of the vocalist Anaís Sancruz (in Madrid, Judit Uris), the concert started with the presentation of the conductor, dressed as always with his usual “cassock”, Neo style (Matrix’s protagonist). After explaining to the audience that we had just heard Zimmer’s music, he made a quick didactic display (somewhat accelerated throughout the show, it must be said) to explain the concept of Tarab, as well as the importance of including classics from the golden age of Hollywood, which are the source of today’s film music (especially from the eighties and nineties, with composers like Horner and Silvestri as stalwarts). So it was Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the child prodigy of European music who had to emigrate to Hollywood when the Nazis came to power in Germany during the 1930s, where he worked in the mecca of cinema, winning a couple of Oscars and a few nominations, who opened the show with his powerful fanfare for The Sea Hawk (1940), an adventure classic starring the gallant Errol Flynn.
Then, as if it were a temporal carousel, the FSO played two consecutive titles by the same composer, the late James Horner, with the lyrical theme dedicated to the Ludlows, from Legends of the Fall (1994), and the much more dynamic one written for the landing of Achilles (“Achilles leads the Myrmidons”), from Troy (2004). Two fragments by the same composer, but with very different moods, in the first one the strings and the duet formed by the first two violinists stood out, and in the second one, the whole apparatus of the brass and percussion, reinforced by a drum kit, which, although it was certainly not part of Horner’s original orchestration, effectively fulfilled the expectations in its orchestral accompaniment.
Then, the program of titles advanced in time to present The Martian (The Martian, 2015), through the theme in which the rescue of the astronaut lost on the red planet takes place (“Fly like Iron Man”), a powerful sequence well captured by Harry Gregson-Williams, who repeats this year with the director, Ridley Scott, in the second part of Gladiator, the great premiere of the final stretch of 2024. A striking sequence for this terrific film by the director of Alien, the 8th passenger (Alien, 1979), who curiously won the Golden Globe for best comedy film in the 2016 edition, where the director himself showed his surprise at the rating of his film (an anecdote that perhaps Constantino should pick up in his didactic and protean contextualizing explanations). It was followed by a suite from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), a great work by James Newton Howard, who takes up the theme of Hedwig by John Williams at the beginning, in order to properly place this new franchise in the Harry Potter universe, and from there, build a new musical world of great richness and color.
To end the first part, Martínez-Orts made use of two contemporary classics of unquestionable effectiveness: a suite dedicated to Alan Silvestri’s exceptional score for Forrest Gump (1994), begun and ended in a very lyrical way by the piano (Bauti Carmena, according to the FSO program), and the Oscar-winning song “Let it Go! ”, belonging to Frozen, 2013, by to Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, which was again performed as heartfelt as it was effective by vocalist Sancruz, attired in a tight fantasy dress.
After the necessary intermission to recover from the proposed musical toboggan, the usual raffle for the trip to Hollywood for two people was held, after matching the ten titles played only for a few seconds by the FSO, and using the web application provided for this purpose. Immediately, Martinez-Orts returned to the charge, returning to Silvestri, but this time in an epic version, to offer a varied suite from The Mummy Returns, 2001, in which the percussion, of characteristically Arabic dyes, stood out above the rest of the orchestra, which also shone with the power with which the score is invested. Something similar happened with the following title, in which the violin solo (according to the FSO program, Amanda Ochoa) of the concertmaster starred the central theme of the well-known Schindler’s List, 1993, by John Williams, a musical piece of deep significance with the Jewish extermination by the Nazis as a background theme, very appropriate to remind the audience of the contrast between what the Jews had to suffer during the Holocaust, and the massacre that they are perpetrating right now against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
From here, the most original proposals followed, as the director offered a suite based on a score with many electronic elements, as was the winner of last year’s Oscar, also for best music, Oppenheimer, by the Swede Ludwig Göransson, who with this one already has two statuettes (the other was for the Marvel movie Black Panther, 2018), with Martínez-Orts explaining why to interpret these electronic music with orchestra. This veteran chronicler was reminded of the mythical vinyl recording of the soundtrack by Vangelis for Blade Runner (1982), whose original music was not marketed until long after the film’s release, being released at the time an LP with an orchestral recording adapted from the work of the Greek author. The fact is that some pre-recorded computer elements were used, in addition to the guitar and electric bass, with an appreciable result. Something that also happened in the epic Inception (Inception, 2011), by Zimmer, already in the final stretch of the concert, where the drum kit was also fundamental and electrifying.
But before, the director offered a suite that, as he explained, and reaffirmed again when I asked him about it once the concert was over, does not appear as such in the film in question, and that was none other than Star Wars: Episode IX. The Rise of Skywalker, 2019, accompanied by the well-known “Imperial March”, dedicated to Darth Vader, which was highly stimulating for how little known and performed live, despite being due to the hand of the very popular Williams, who with this would achieve yet another Oscar nomination, perhaps too recurrent theme in the explanations of the director, who seems to be guided too much by the awarding of the precious statuettes. Proof of this was the inclusion of the theme of the last sequence, that of the return to earth from space of the surviving astronaut played by Sanda Bullock in the extraordinary Gravity (2013), which won the Academy Award for the British Steven Price, better known so far for his work as sound engineer. Once again, the orchestra adapted the electronic touches of the original score in a vibrant and thrilling fragment, which also counted with the help of vocalist Sancruz, who knew how to assemble her voice among the orchestral apparatus.
At the final point, a radical change was made in order to give the show a festive atmosphere, so that the concert concluded with a suite of the score and songs from Alan Menken’s brilliant score for The Little Mermaid, 1989, which initiated a whole era in the Disney factory animation of the early nineties. Again with the assistance of Anaís Sancruz, and with the inclusion of the orchestral version of the song, “Under the Sea”, which won the Oscar that year (in addition to winning it also for best score), a lively calypso very well received by the audience, Martínez-Orts was forced, as it could not be otherwise in his homeland, where the FSO was born, to offer an encore: the surprising and brilliant march composed by Robert Folk for Police Academy, 1984, which is why the members of the FSO put on their corresponding police hats when performing the piece, in which even the odd patriotic tricorn was glimpsed. An unexpected surprise (not so much, knowing the director’s affiliation to that particular decade) that the audience was very grateful for the catchiness of the aforementioned fanfare.
After the festive performance of the very popular “Cantina Band”, by Williams, which became the FSO’s farewell “anthem”, as everyone knows by now, and with all the sections gloating separately with some cinephile gag (the violinists, standing up, wielded in unison the popular Vulcan salute, for example), the party ended with a happy and satisfied audience. An audience that was also exhausted after the aforementioned slide of themes and the back-and-forth of dates offered by the FSO and its leader, who, unavailable to discouragement and after having given all possible explanations about the selection offered in the most energetic and enthusiastic way, surrounded by the usual framework of lights that accompanies each concert-show of his orchestra, still had time to pose with all those who approached the photocall. There, he posed with the last audience member who asked him to do so, along with the usual costumed characters belonging to the galactic saga par excellence, but where also appeared for the first time some from the magical world of Hedwig, as well as an unexpected Mulan.
With dozens of concerts a year performed by the FSO, the orchestra knows how to interpret very well what it plays, as requested by its creator, Constantino Martínez-Orts, without trying to emulate the famous philharmonic orchestras that have been and are in the world of music. This is something else. Cinema and spectacle. And that is more than guaranteed.
Article and pictures by Frederic Torres
