Thursday, June 17, 2010

Something for Thursday

Here's something cool: Franz von Suppe's overture Poet and Peasant, played by the MGM Symphony Orchestra in a film made in 1955. My understanding is that films like these used to be part of the pre-feature entertainment in movie theaters. Would that they would do stuff like this again!

I'm especially fascinated here by the orchestra itself: it's a big group, with a ton of strings, and the layout is pretty interesting, too, with the harps right down between the cellos and the violas, and the basses way up in the back of the entire orchestra. This is very cool!

3 comments:

Roger Owen Green said...

I love this foe so many reasons:
1) the info about the historical context of this performance
2) I have this double LP with a bunch of overtures (Offenbach, Rossini, among many others) which I loved. This piece was also on it
3) those overtures were often used in those old WB cartoons (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck) and they were almost certainly my 1st introductions to those pieces

Lynn said...

One of my all time favorites!

redsneakz said...

Sic transit gloria mundi.

This is my favorite of all of von Suppe's overtures, and I had the pleasure of playing it three times in various symphonic bands. Von Suppe was much beloved in his own time, with the people of Vienna ranking him right up there with Schubert.

The orchestral makeup is interesting, but the placement of the harpist less so.