“Remember the terrific tuba part in Back to the Future? Or that really sweet violin solo about halfway through? Of course you don’t,” writes Peter Dobrin in Sunday’s (7/10) Philadelphia Inquirer. “It’s probably safe to assume that no one ever bought a ticket to the movie in 1985 just to hear Alan Silvestri’s score. And yet, that’s exactly what more than 2,500 did Saturday night at the Mann Center…. Having the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong performing the score live while Michael J. Fox time-traveled in his little purple Calvin Kleins raised the experience considerably…. The Pittsburgh Symphony … brought dashes of romance, magic, tension and perplexity wrapped in a potent ensemble sound managed vividly by their assistant conductor, Lecce-Chong (a Curtis graduate).” Without the Pittsburgh Symphony, “Doc Brown saving the day atop the clock tower in the storm would not have been the tingling climax it was. It was, at the end of the two hours, a lot like taking your DeLorean to the local mall: much more sex and firepower than you really need for the occasion, but when you’ve got it, sometimes it just feels good to flaunt it.”
Posted July 14, 2016
