MOVIE MAGIC - NATIONAL CAPITAL ORCHESTRA

Louis Sharpe, Conductor and Artistic Director

Snow Concert Hall November 8

 

Reviewed by Len Power

 

Providing an opportunity for people to listen to movie music from favourite films live without the movie, the National Capital Orchestra showed that movie music can stand on its own and still wow an audience.

The program contained popular favourites amongst the musical items, but they were interspersed with other items from the classical repertoire that have also had a life at the movies.

Conducted by Louis Sharpe, the orchestra were clearly in a festive mood wearing an assortment of hats and headgear reminiscent of various movies. There were even a couple of dinosaur head skeletons grinning hungrily at the audience.

Sharpe gave particularly informative introductions to each work, many of them amusing and all showing his enthusiasm for the movies and their music. He really set the tone for a relaxed afternoon full of great music.

Louis Sharpe, conductor

Music from the movie, Chicken Run, composed by John Powell, was a good choice to open the show. This spoof of the music in films such as The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen, sounded epic but still witty and cheerful. The orchestra gave it a strong and exciting performance.

Completely different, the next item was On the Nature of Daylight, an atmospheric, brooding classical work composed by Max Richter. It has been used extensively in both television shows and the movies, most recently in Hamnet.

National Capital Orchestra

There were a number of other musical works from popular films, such as 007 Through The Years, featuring music from the Bond films, Golden from the Kpop Demon Hunters movie and two works by composer, John Williams from the films E.T. and Jurassic Park.Hearing the music live and away from the films gave the audience a chance to discover things they had not noticed before. The brief piano solos in the works by Williams were a surprise. These works were played with all the drama and colour the music demanded, while your imagination filled in remembered moments of the films.

Those items were interspersed with other pieces of classical music that had found its way into films. Elgar’s Nimrod from the Enigma Variations was heard in The Matrix, Elizabeth and Dunkirk. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 – Allegretto has appeared to great effect in films such as The King’s Speech, Immortal Beloved and even 1974’s Zardoz.

There was also the majestic Adagio from the ballet, Spartacus, by Khachaturian, which conjured up images of sailing ships from television’s past with The Onedin Line. The orchestra met the challenge of playing music in different styles extremely well.

The concert concluded with music from Pirates of the Caribbean, composed by Klaus Badelt and arranged by Ted Ricketts. Orchestra members and the conductor donned pirate hats and gave it a rousing performance full of swash and buckle.

 

Photos by Peter Hislop

This review was first published by Canberra CityNews digital edition on 9 November 2026.

Len Power's reviews are also broadcast on Artsound FM 92.7 in the ‘Arts Cafe’ and ‘Arts About’ programs and published in his blog 'Just Power Writing' at https://justpowerwriting.blogspot.com/.

Len Power also presents the weekly Concert Hall program on Artsound FM, playing recordings of some of the best concerts from in and around Canberra. Concert Hall can be heard on Sundays at 8pm and is repeated on Wednesdays at 2pm.