If ever Gerard Salonga remounts FILMharmoniKA, don’t miss it. It’s not only super entertaining. It’s educational.
FILMharmonika (take note of the additional letter “M”) was last Saturday’s concert by Salonga with his orchestra, FILharmoniKA, of music from the movies with Bituin Escalante as guest.
The lovely thing about FILMharmoniKa was that non-hardcore classical music lovers easily understood and enjoyed the performance. Salonga presented an interesting repertoire that combined the majestic with the soulful. He started the evening with the vibrant theme from the movie classic “The Magnificent Seven” followed by the haunting pieces from the Schindler’s List by John Williams.
The younger people in the audience who may not not have seen “The Magnificent Seven”, the Hollywood hit in the 60’s that starred Yul Bryner , Steve Mc Queen, Charles Bronson recognized the music which they identified with the Marlboro Country ad.
Salonga said if you listen closely to film music, you will recognize the genius that also went into classical music. He described composer John Williams (Star Wars, Superman, E.T Schindler’s List) as the modern day Beethoven.
Salonga,whom classical music critic Pablo Tariman describes as the “emerging Filipino star conductor”, also paid tribute to Ennio Moricone with the music from “A Fistful of dollars,” a 1964 western spaghetti film (a sub genre of Western film in the mid-1960’s directed by Italians, co-produced by Spanish partners) directed by Sergio Leone starring Clint Eastwood and Cinema Paradiso, which many are familiar with because of Josh Groban.
Bituin, as always, was awesome. She exuded daring and adventure in John Barry’s music from James Bond movies, “Goldfinger” and “Diamonds are Forever.” She came back in the second part with Henry Mancini’s “Moonriver” from the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany”.
For the encore, Bituin sang Cinema Paradiso. Salonga quipped, “For fans of Cinema Paradiso, this is your night.”
Salonga’s interpretation of Bernard Hermann’s narrative of strings in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” captured the frightening atmosphere of that classic suspense thriller. The shrieking violins made vivid the terrifying shower scene in that movie.
When Salonga and the FILharmoniKA played Danny Elfman’s music from “Spider Man” and TV series “The Simpsons”, Charmaine Deogracias of NHK TV kept on saying “Had I known they would be performing these music, I would have brought Maru.” Maru is her son.
In between numbers, the cherubic-looking Salonga engaged the audience with background information about next featured music.The audience was a mix of adult and young people. Apparently, Salonga is able to bridge between the aging traditional audience of classical music and the youth.
Salonga’s finale number was the Star Wars Suite. Simply awesome.
Of course, the audience wanted more. Salonga performed the theme from “Superman”. And the audience soared with him and his orchestra.
From Babeth Lolarga’s Facebook wall:
Salonga is a good communicator. He is not shy about turning to face the audience between numbers to pick up the mic and annotate a piece before it is performed. It is a format that will help create and mold a new audience that will consider concert-going a vital part of their lives.
My hope is in his 2011 season, he will add, pound for pound, more classics in the orchestra’s repertoire. May he strike a balance between crowd-pleasers like last night’s “Star Wars Suite,” “James Bond Theme,” among others, and the musical wealth of the ages that is little seen and heard live. We see the makings of another sort of champion if he achieves this.
Good start!