Walt Disney was one sneaky guy.
He used his beloved Mickey Mouse to trick whole generations of kids into listening to classical music.
And though he’s long gone, Disney is still at it.
The music and scenes from Disney’s seminal 1940 animated feature “Fantasia” and its follow-up, “Fantasia 2000,” are the cornerstones of “Disney ‘Fantasia’ Live,” the concert program that the Tucson Symphony Orchestra will perform on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Disney’s Jonathan Heely is the show’s executive producer and was largely responsible for taking the idea from concept in 2012 to a thriving Disney franchise — 150 shows to date all over the world. Heely gave us some insight into the history of “Fantasia” and the magic of performing it live with a symphony.
Birth of a genre: “(Disney) was doing these little shorts called ‘Silly Symphony’ before ‘Snow White’ and all that and learning techniques of animation. But a lot of the accompaniment was light classical music. So it just kind of grew out of that idea.”
Upping the musical ante: “In the first ‘Fantasia’, the music (he used) was not played in the concert hall that much. In 1940, ‘Nutcracker’ suite was nothing like what it is today. ‘The Rite of Spring’ was only like 30 years old, and it had caused a big commotion in those days. So (Disney) was kind of stretching it. Now those are very common pieces, but at the time it was daring.”
The plot: Mickey Mouse is cast as an aspiring magician who oversteps his limits, which leads to scenes all dictated by the music: a comic ballet performed by ostriches, hippos, elephants and alligators for Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”; the forces of dark and light dueling it out in “Night on Bald Mountain” and “Ave Maria.” The Philadelphia Orchestra performed the soundtrack under the baton of Leopold Stokowski.
What to expect: Digitally remastered images of the original 1940 film and its follow-up will be shown on a giant screen at the back of the stage while the Tucson Symphony Orchestra performs the corresponding film soundtrack, including Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite,” Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony, Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” and Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” The biggest challenge is keeping the video and orchestra in sync, Heely said.
Music all over the stylistic map: You go from Russian 20th-century composer Tchaikovsky to the 18th-century granddaddy of German composers, Beethoven, and quintessential 20th-century American composer Gershwin. In “a normal concert, you wouldn’t program all that diversity,” Heely said.
Bring the kids: “The culture of media is so ingrained, kids are looking at iPads as infants in their car seats. Even little children are mesmerized by this huge screen and the power of the orchestra.”
Home-field advantage: “This is the home team, the local orchestra performing for their audience. ... It’s going to be played very well,” Heely said. “The other alternative is to have a traveling orchestra, a traveling conductor come into your hall and play, but I think it’s so much neater that local orchestras get the chance to sink their teeth into it and give it a shot.”
Popular ticket: Tucson is one of six U.S. cities and two cities in the United Kingdom that will perform “Disney ‘Fantasia’ Live” during the holidays. “I don’t know if it’s the ‘Nutcracker’ or just the Disney feeling of it, but it certainly is played a lot this time of year,” Heely said.
