Belgian conductor Jean-Pierre Haeck has shed some light on how he and the Mosan Orchestral Ensemble were chosen to record Michel Legrand’s orchestral score for the Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind.
Haeck participated in a video interview (see below) with the French newspaper La Meuse at Daft Studios in Malmedy, Belgium, where the recording session took place March 19-21 .
Our French colleague Marco Pierrard, creator of The Ultimate Orson Welles Timeline, was kind enough to provide us with a translation.
Jean-Pierre Haeck: I met Michel Legrand last year at a concert with the Mosan Orchestral Ensemble. He was conducting at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi (in Belgium). We had a very good rapport and a month ago, the phone rang — it was a French telephone number — and it was Michel Legrand. He told me that I must record the score for a movie — “I want you to do it with your orchestra, do you want to do it ?”
The dates were already planned. We had to find a studio to get things into action. My Mosan orchestra is usually comprised of 35 or 40 musicians. Sixty-six musicians were required to record this music. We’re here, one month later, with everybody in the studio, to hear before everybody else the new music Michel Legrand has written for the score. It’s very demanding, but also very stimulating to be the first to hear these melodies that will perhaps — like other of his tunes — win the Oscar or be embraced by the public.
Reporter: Is it a dream to record the score for a movie ?
Haeck: No, I think it’s an extra rope to my bow and for the Mosan Orchestral Ensemble. (Note: French expression meaning it is something he has some experience doing.) We have already recorded a lot of albums, but working on the movie already edited — to see the images played and adding the music — it’s like when you cook, you add the ingredients one after another and at last you have — I hope — a really good meal.
Reporter: Have you seen the movie? Can we say it will be great?
Haeck: I didn’t see the movie because it is a well-kept secret by the studio. So the only thing that I have seen are the sequences of the movie that scroll in front of me and we must play the music on the movie with a « click ». But the movie as a whole, nobody can see it. It’s a secret, almost top secret.
Reporter: Are you an Orson Welles fan?
Haeck: I love Orson Welles! And it’s extraordinary that this film, which was never edited, is now edited at last and will be presented to the public. It’s a resurrection that I find absolutely interesting.
Reporter: Are you hoping to see it presented at a major festival ?
Haeck: I hope that I will be invited to the premiere, we’ll see! I don’t want to reveal a secret, but it’s already intended for a great position at a certain place where you climb steps on a red carpet.
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