BBC NOW brought a family-friendly orchestral accompaniment to both Disney Fantasia films with two weekend performances of Disney’s Fantasia: Live In Concert – the first in Swansea’s Brangwyn Hall followed by a second in St David’s Hall, part of the Cardiff venue’s 2022-23 Classical Series.

If you’re an animation nerd, Fantasia is one that needs no introduction: released in 1940 and supervised by Walt himself, like a lot of masterpieces, the film wasn’t particularly successful in its day, coming out at the height of WWII and incurring high production and theatrical costs thanks to state-of-the-art sound equipment. Re-releases ended up making up for that, though. By now, it’s had a turn-of-the-century sequel, Fantasia 2000, produced by Walt’s nephew Roy, and the usual multimedia Disney franchising treatment, not to mention critical adoration.

Live concerts for films and even video games are commonplace these days. Still, Fantasia is especially fitting in this setting, given classical music – live classical music, at that – is built into it from the ground up. Eight animated segments form a recorded concert programme which in the original is conducted by Leopold Stokowski (with cameos from Mickey Mouse). The chosen pieces are a who’s-who of the artform, from Bach to Schubert, providing a foundational inroad for younger viewers and a different visual way of experiencing some of the greatest music ever written for older ones.

The St. David’s Hall performance was completely sold out, and at least a third of the audience were children, who reacted exactly as intended at the right moments: sitting in rapt attention during The Nutcracker woodland sequence, giggling at the balletic hippo and crocodile duet for Dance Of The Hours, and jumping out of their seats when Stravinsky’s volcanic Firebird awakened (earning some amused reactions from the violinists). During my obsessive rewatches as a kid – wearing my VHS copy to breaking point – I hid behind sofa cushions when the dinosaurs died in The Rite Of Spring, when the Chernabog unleashed hell on Earth in Night On Bald Mountain, and when Mickey’s enchanted broomstick army nearly waterboarded him in The Sorceror’s Apprentice (I blame this for my aversion to zombie films to this day). Without wanting to sound like Mrs. Trunchbull, kids should be challenged by the media they consume, and it’s nice to see an 80-year-old animated film still able to scare the living daylights out of them.

Under the supervision of conductor Anthony Gabriele – very animated onstage, albeit not in the Disney sense of the term – BBC NOW performed each piece with aplomb, only occasionally veering a smidge out of sync with the projected film. I was in two minds about the decision to string together selected segments rather than play the whole film. On one hand, it was interesting to see Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 (possibly the biggest-ever gap between film sequels?) mish-mashed together, and there was even a segment I hadn’t seen before: Clair De Lune, featuring a stork at an idyllic lake, which was cut and later restored to DVD releases in 2000. However, it was a shame not to see the live-action inserts of Stokowski and his silhouetted orchestra, and personal favourites including the aforementioned Rite Of Spring and Night On Bald Mountain were missing. Maybe the Chernobog is still too intense to be let out the box…

This year being the 100th anniversary of the media behemoth, more of the same is on its way later in the year in the form of the Disney 100 concert, at Cardiff International Arena and so expected to pack in a bigger audience. While this may mean a bigger screen, it might not have the sonic grandeur of the country’s foremost classical music venue. 

Disney’s Fantasia Live In Concert, St. David’s Hall, Cardiff, Sun 15 Jan

words HANNAH COLLINS