Details

Buy it now from Amazon

Walt Disney's Fantasia: Remastered Original Soundtrack Edition

Walt Disney Records

List price: $6.99
Lowest new price: $5.40
Lowest used price: $5.47

Toccata And Fugue In D Minor - (by Bach)
The Nutcracker Suite Op.71A: Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy
The Nutcracker Suite Op.71A: Chinese Dance
The Nutcracker Suite Op.71A: Dance Of The Reed Flutes
The Nutcracker Suite Op.71A: Arabian Dance
The Nutcracker Suite Op.71A: Russian Dance
The Nutcracker Suite Op.71A: Waltz Of The Flowers
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Rite Of Spring
Symphony No.6 ('Pastoral') Op.68: I. Allegro Ma Non Troppo
Symphony No.6 ('Pastoral') Op.68: II. Andante Molto Mosso
Symphony No.6 ('Pastoral') Op.68: III. Allegro
IV. Allegro
V. Allegretto
Dance Of The Hours (From The Opera 'La Gioconda')
A Night On Bald Mountain
Ave Maria Op.52 No.6

Average customer rating: 3.5 stars

Has this been remastered since the 1990 release?

One thing that does not appear in either the description or any of the reviews: Is this edition is a more recent remaster or is it just a repackaged edition of the 1990 remaster (which I already have)? In other words, has it actually been remastered since the 1990 edition? Also, are there any plans for a 70th Anniversary edition?

Too many reviewers are unaware of WHY this sounds like it does!

Yes, it's poor-quality sound; originally recorded in the 1930s on FILM SOUNDTRACKS--not even 78 records! Recording tape had not even been invented yet. It was a huge experiment: Disney's engineers made a multitrack recording which was to be played through early 'surround-sound' speakers in large theaters. This predated regular stereo audio by 20 years. Sitting in a theater hearing the audio spill out all around you, bouncing around the room and intermingling with the sound from the other speakers, it was an awesome experience. Also, the original version had odd 'special effects' panning in some places, sending various parts of the orchestra sailing around the theater. Again, it was a cool effect in the room, but a 'real orchestra' could never do that.

Unfortunately, when all this is mixed down to a 2-track recording and presented in a clean digital format, every idiosyncrasy of the original recording is presented right along with it. 1930s film soundtracks are noisy and grainy-sounding. The oddball panning creates strange phasing problems. If you are expecting to hear a pristeen 'serious' recording, you will be disappointed. I hear it as a nostalgic recording, reminding me how it 'felt' to be in that theater watching such an important piece of cinematic history. I also approach it as a pioneering feat of technical production, given the time period from which it comes. It really doesn't deserve the trashing all these people are giving it. It is what it is, and it ain't what it aint! Don't expect a hamburger to taste like a steak.

This is NOT the "Original Soundtrack"!

I was very disappointed to find out that this is in fact not the original soundtrack to "Fantasia" as it was released in 1940, but rather to the 1969 CENSORED version.
The affected work is Beethoven's 6th Symphony (tracks 1 to 3 on the second CD).

As film buffs know, the "Pastoral" scene with the centaurs in Fantasia was censored in order to remove the "Sunflower" character, which the Walt Disney company in their infinite PC-consciousness deemed to be too offensive to be left in the movie.

As an aside, yes this character was a very poor racial stereotype but the ham-handed approach with which Disney censored the character just butchered the scene - from grainy closeups (to remove the character via pan & scan cropping) to ridiculous editing (such as the red carpet magically rolling up by itself, rather than being pushed by Sunflower).

But how does this affect the soundtrack, you ask?

Well, all this fooling around in the editing room resulted in the deletion of about 20 seconds of footage, obviously with dramatic effects on the music. The editor was thus forced to "censor" the music as well, cutting a trill here and there, removing a repeated musical phrase... you get the idea.

If you listen closely to the Pastoral symphony and compare it with other recordings, you'll notice that the music just does not "flow" properly. I noticed artifacts notably at the following positions:

Movement II (Andante Molto Mosso, track 2 on CD2) at around 1:45

Movement III (Allegro, track 3 on CD2) at around 1:25.

I don't want to get into the debate about whether it was right or wrong to censor the MOVIE.

But it's beyond the pale to release a censored SOUNDTRACK, butchering Beethoven's masterpiece as well as insulting the buyer with false advertising in the process. Original Soundtrack, indeed! Of course, "Remastered Censored Soundtrack" doesn't sound nearly as catchy...

A Great Reminder

An evaluation is in relation to criteria. My evaluation of this set of CDs is that it is simply wonderful as it reminds me of the many happy hours my children would spend watching and rewatching Fantasia, and of course the sound of it was there too. This is that sound and I love it for itself and the memories it invokes are wonderful. Even an ugly person can become handsome if he or she is full of love. Faults are relative.

A disappointment - great music, dated performances, terrible sound, questionable sound engineering

No one should expect state-of-the-art classical music when buying performances made in the 1950's. Nostalgia is the word for this album. But nostalgia may fall a bit short as you struggle to make it through these performances. In addition to the difficulty of actually hearing the music through the scratchy (did they hold a microphone up to a record player's speakers to capture these digital tracks?), hiss-ridden background, you may notice that the performance standards of the 1950's were very different from today's - and not in a good way.

The performances are overly dramatic - bombastic, even - and lack the subtlety and sophistication inherent in much of this music. These musically jarring performances were no doubt intentionally accentuated to match the animations they were intended to accompany. They don't make the transition to audio-only without problems. With nothing to watch, you simply can't help but listen more critically to the performances themselves, and, for me, the additional scrutiny makes the experience a chore rather than a pleasure. I really don't know whether this is due to the soundtrack-oriented intention of Disney's original vision, Stokowski's dated musical judgements, the Philadelphia Orchestra's laissez-faire performance standards, the sound-engineer's bizarre habit of constantly varying the dynamics and stereo-imaging of the performance, or the total failure of the current album's producers to attempt to improve any of the 1950's technological shortcomings of the originally-recorded tracks, but the result is simply a mess - painful to listen to.

These are timeless classics, of course, and doubtless will find a receptive audience among those with fond personal memories of childhood experiences, but for for anything except the most extreme non-critical listening, these recordings do not stand the test of time at all well. And Disney should be taken to task, in my opinion, for releasing digital tracks without availing themselves of the proper technologies to improve the technical shortcomings of the original recordings, at least.

If you're only interested in the music itself, there are far more musically satisfying performances of all of these pieces available. I urge any discerning classical music listeners to seek them out rather than suffering through these antiquated performances and recordings.