In a review posted on Sunday (9/22) in The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini writes, “When Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, announced a new initiative this past January, ‘The Art of the Score: Film Week at the Philharmonic,’ he said he thought the programs could be exciting and enjoyable. The idea was to screen some classic films at Avery Fisher Hall and have the orchestra play the scores live. But ‘exciting’ and ‘enjoyable’ hardly do justice to the thrilling experience of watching Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, on Friday night at Avery Fisher Hall, with Mr. Gilbert conducting the Philharmonic and the chorus Musica Sacra in live performances of the works by Gyorgy Ligeti, Aram Khachaturian, Richard Strauss and Johann Strauss II that constitute the sound track of this 1968 film.… Like the previous film night earlier last week, devoted to music from Alfred Hitchcock movies, this event packed the hall with exactly the demographic of younger, diverse people American orchestras are trying to reach.… Maybe this film night will entice some newcomers to take in a symphonic program without a film. How about a complete performance of Ligeti’s Requiem?”
Posted September 24, 2013
