Classical review: BBC SSO: Casablanca City Halls, Glasgow

By Ken Walton
Published on 17/09/2012 03:19

It’s become something of a perennial extravaganza for the BBC SSO to pre-empt the start of its winter season with a Hollywood classic, in which the band plays along to a big screen showing from which the musical soundtrack has been extracted.

BBC SSO: CASABLANCA

City Halls, Glasgow

* * * *

Last year it was Hitchcock’s Psycho. This year, on Saturday evening, they played along with Sam, Humph and Ingrid, the immortal stars of Michael Curtiz’s 1943 wartime classic Casablanca; no easy task, given that part of the music – Dooley Wilson’s signature singing of As Time Goes By, and the on-screen big band in Rick’s Café Americain – has to be synchronised with.

There were one or two moments where it nearly drifted apart – that wonderful vocal spat between the Germans singing Die Wacht am Rhein and the more robust French chorus of La Marseillaise, for instance. And occasionally it was difficult to pick out the words above the orchestra, particularly the quick-fire throwaway lines of such foreign-accented cameos as Peter Lorre’s Signor Ugarte.

But so much was to be gained in a fluid presentation that gave Max Steiner’s mood-setting score a resonance and pungency that was quasi-operatic in its ability to amplify the emotions and give theatrical clout to climactic scene changes and that smouldering undercurrent of wartime intrigue.

It was all down to the slick direction of American conductor Timothy Brock. Word is, he may be back next year with a silent film project. It could be the start of a beautiful friendship.