The ASO play 'The Wizard Of Oz'


The Adelaide Film Festival will provide two opportunities to experience live symphonic soundtracks set to film. As well as experiencing international experts in the choral music of Arvo Part, Adelaide (and Melbourne) will witness the reconstructed score by Arlen and Stoddart to a restored print of the 1939 classic 'The Wizard Of Oz'. In fact it will be the Adelaide Symphony who accompany Judy Garland and others in this truly classic film.

Prior to these performances I was indeed privileged to be able to confer with famed PBS arts producer John Goberman from his home in New York City. This interactive version is the jewel in the crown of his film/orchestra concerts that have included masterworks and their excerpts from such feted directors as Eisenstein and Hitchcock. So popular have Goberman's become in the States that over 5,000 people attended premieres of his Symphonic Night At The Movies in Washington and Chicago.

Commencing with Prokofiev's monumental score for 'Alexander Nevsky', Goberman moved onto 'The Wizard Of Oz', which proved to be a far greater task. "A lot of the score didn't exist so John Wilson - an incredibly gifted English friend of mine - just wrote some of it down upon hearing it, believe it or not. And while the original scores by Arlen and Stoddart no longer existed, fortunately, the original soundtrack recordings and rehearsals did. Here there were separate vocal and orchestral mikes in use. The vocal ones primarily picked up only the voices so that helped tremendously in taking the original soundtrack apart in order to reconstruct it."

Even so, Goberman states that the "taking-it-apart" is the hardest task, having to take away the orchestral bed of the soundtrack and just leave the solo voices intact. He admits that some of this can be eased by technology but that even so, it's still a painstaking and time consuming process. "It's a lot of hard work, and technically it's difficult. You would think that by now we would have a button that could be activated to get rid of the music, but there really isn't. I started doing this sort of work with film in 1987. It has got easier since then, but there no real magic. It's still a case of sitting down and methodically going through note by note because the voices must come through the process clear and alone."

Goberman is quick to point out and emphasise the fact that his version of 'The Wizard Of Oz' "is not just the screening of a film; it's the performance of one." In his hands the film becomes an event that not only attracts contents and dressing up within the audience, in the 'States, of the nine surviving original munchkins in the 1939 film, five still come along to these amazing interactive experiences. For those fascinated by trivia, Goberman informs me that there were 125 in the film.

According to him the reason the film still remains popular is because it is a "brilliantly constructed piece of art. You can think of it as populist like 'Batma'n or something but it's not really. It's beautifully made and brilliantly constructed - as tight as drums," he reflects. "It is a work of art and most films wouldn't qualify as that and of course it happens to have characters with whom generations of audiences can identify. It also has monumental evergreen themes and in that, it's like 'Nevsk'y. You know, 'Alexander Nevsky' is a popular film. It's as much about cowboys and Indians as it is about Russians and Germans. You've got to remember that these films were made during the true golden age and without doubt I truly believe that Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein is the greatest ever composed. And of course, 'The Wizard Of Oz' ranks in the top five films of all time."

Brett Allen-Bayes


The ASO play 'The Wizard Of Oz' on Fri 23 and Sat 24 Feb at the Festival Theatre, as part of the Film Festival. To win a double pass, see the Prize Frenzy(tm)