For generations of American moviegoers, Walt Disney's classic film Fantasia, originally released in November 1940. Is a nostalgic favorite, marking the first time many of them ever heard classical music. The work is also acknowledged to be the creative high point of the Disney studio's enormous output, a brilliantly executed technical tour de force and a masterpiece of design, movement, and color. It is a testament to the taste and genius of both Walt Disney and his musical collaborator, Leopold Stokowski.
Over the years Fantasia’s visuals survived in pristine condition, but its sound track deteriorated, and sonically sophisticated contemporary audiences were put off by the tubby, shrill, and muffled quality that had befallen the once rich and resonant orchestral performances. Last year, Disney executives became aware that if Fantasia were to survive for future generations, its sound track would have to be totally rerecorded. That would require executing a difficult technical task. Stokowski recorded the musical score forty-four years ago, in 1938, and for the next three years, Disney and his artists tailored their animation exactly to the music. This time, a new conductor and symphony orchestra had to be assembled and the procedure reversed: the music had to be played to synchronize with the animation – a process so challenging that it makes a careful dubbing of a foreign film into English seem like child’s play.
The job was given to Irwin Kostal, a seventy-year-old, energetic giant of a man, one of Hollywood's most respected musical craftsmen, twice an Academy Award winner (for his musical supervision of West Side Story and The Sound of Music), and an old hand at the techniques of scoring animated motion pictures (Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and Pete's Dragon). He also knew classical music and the fine points of musical arranging and had learned to conduct in Chicago under the tutelage of the respected composer-conductor Nikolai Malko.
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