On Saturday, March 29, conductor Andrew Constantine will meet you at Auer Performance Hall at Purdue University Fort Wayne, where the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra will take you and your family on a magical journey. They’ll bring the world of Harry Potter to life through the power of music.

Setting out from Platform 9¾, King’s Cross Station, the musicians on the train to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will weave spellbinding melodies when they play selections from the orchestral suites from the first four films in the series: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). The music from the first three is by the great composer John Williams; for the fourth, Scottish film composer Patrick Doyle stepped in.

“I think that (British author) J.K. Rowling’s combination of legend into her own very fertile imagination and the creation of Harry Potter conjures up all sorts of images which lend themselves so well to musical depiction,” Constantine said.

It’s hard to believe for folks of a certain age that Rowling published the first young-adult novel in her series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, almost 30 years ago, in 1997. 

Potter and his parallel world of wizardry has become a cultural touchstone, pun very much intended, the world over. We’ve been enchanted ever since, insomuch as the Ministry of Magic permits us Muggles to observe their goings-on.

Lesson on composers

An orchestra conductor is a kind of wizard, and a professor of wizardry at that. Constantine is known for waving “a stick with a point,” but for this show he’s reported to be swapping that for a magic wand with a phoenix feather at its core, from Ollivander’s shop in Diagon Alley, the acquisition of which was funded by an anonymous patron. 

I asked Constantine about the music and how he put this concert together.

Williams, of course, is revered as the greatest film composer in the world. He’s known for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, and much more, mostly in collaboration with director Steven Spielberg. 

The first three Harry Potter movies marked a bit of a departure for Williams, working with the vision of directors Chris Columbus and Alfonso Cuarón and producing a range of themes that used various instruments, not always an orchestra. The pieces Constantine selected have been published in orchestrated form. But for Constantine’s money, among the Harry Potter films, “the best music is the music that Patrick Doyle wrote,” in the fourth film, Prisoner of Azkaban.

Moreover, as the professor of wizardry, Constantine wants to introduce the audience to some earlier fantasy music that inspired Williams and Doyle, and in all probability Rowling as well.

“If we talk about the concept of music and cinema and children’s movies and the whole Harry Potter phenomenon and the magical world, I chose a couple of pieces to intersperse in there simply to show where John Williams’ language comes from,” Constantine said. “It’s not unusual to write about magic in music.”

Beyond Potter

In between Harry Potter selections, the orchestra will play The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a “symphonic poem” written by French composer Paul Dukas in 1897. It’s inspired by a fantasy work by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe from 100 years before that. But you know it from its animated motion picture treatment in the landmark and now-timeless Disney extravaganza Fantasia from 1940, in which Mickey Mouse plays the apprentice.

“This is a tremendous piece of colorful, evocative music with quite dazzling orchestration and the whole use of the brooms and that sort of thing to signify the coming to life of an inanimate object, as it were, with a spell cast on it,” Constantine said. “I think it is quite amazing.”

Constantine’s other interpolation is the “Infernal Dance” from Igor Stravinsky’s 1910 ballet The Firebird. 

Based on themes from Russian fairy tales going back centuries, The Firebird is the story of a brave prince and his perilous phoenix, or firebird, who battle and defeat a powerful, evil sorcerer. The Firebird is quite recognizable as an influence on so much fantasy music in the ensuing 100 years.

Stravinsky wrote the first version for the Ballet Russes in Paris and revised it as an orchestral suite. The Firebird is full of complex odd-time meters, which must have been startling to the ballet dancers, and skillfully uses a range of sound colors, including a huge range of percussion and fascinating extended playing techniques from the other musicians. It remains one of the most crowd-pleasing works for audiences to this day.

Back to Williams’ and Doyle’s themes from Harry Potter: if you’re a fan, you’ll recognize the themes from Diagon Alley, Hedwig, the Nimbus 2000, Dobby the House-Elf, Gilderoy Lockhart, Fawkes the Phoenix, and more.

When you board the train, wear your colors for House Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin, but remember that we’ll set our quidditch rivalries aside, as we’re all under the same enchantment in this musical festival. 

Let’s all take a ride on the magic of music.