“There will be a twist when the New York Philharmonic strikes up the band this weekend for the lush Gershwin score of Woody Allen’s 1979 film, ‘Manhattan’ ” as the film is screened live, writes Michael Cooper in Friday’s (9/16) New York Times. “Since the Philharmonic recorded the original soundtrack, the performance it re-enacts will be its own. Irene Breslaw, a viola player who is one of a handful of members of the orchestra who played on the original film, will find herself performing the same parts … on the same stage as she did at the original recording session.… Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic’s music director, has been preparing for the performances on Friday and Saturday by studying the film and soundtrack, which his parents played on as members of the orchestra…. The Philharmonic has long been a Gershwin orchestra—it gave the premiere of ‘An American in Paris’ in 1928—so it was a natural choice for the soundtrack…. The task of reassembling the music for this weekend’s concerts fell to Peter Bernstein, the composer and orchestrator whose father was the Academy Award-winning film composer Elmer Bernstein.… ‘It was really a bit of very fun musical archaeology,’ he said.”
Posted September 16, 2016
Pictured: A scene from Woody Allen’s 1979 film “Manhattan.” Photo by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
