6 November - Sibelius & Fantasia

A recent evening spent at the Barbican listening enraptured to that rather handsome conductr Salonen 'play' Sibelius, leads me to searching more on either on Youtube (work would be extra dull if a discreet earphone could not be sported throughout the day) and a few clicks away I find Disney's Fantasia.

I Remember going to see it at the cinema with my mother. Must have been 5/6? Of course I could have sworn it was out that year but in fact was released a few decades before my birth and uh ho, must have been a regular at the cinema at Xmas. To this day it’s probably the pieces of music I recognise most instantly. The whole sequence with the brooms and the buckets drowning Mickey. Love it to bits. It didn’t scare me… how unbelieveable to hear that at that age. Bit like going to the Imax the week before (was Halloween, we had a ten year old in tow and not many ideas between 3 adults) and watching Haunted Castle which uses various bits of opera most notably 'La donna e’ mobile'. Wonder if as a kid that's your first exposure to classical music and what you make of it, if you have words to describe it or if it's just sounds. Er, must ask the ten year old of course, why did I not think about it at the time...