A Too-Polished Orchestra?

A documentary showing the notoriously fractured Philadelphia Orchestra from the inside ought to be one of the most exciting and controversial entries in the city’s film festival. But the documentary you want to get made isn’t always the one that gets made, and Music From The Inside Out, which purports to be such an insider’s look at one of the country’s great orchestras, is in fact nothing more than a big wet sloppy public relations kiss. “This is the Philadelphia Orchestra’s polished but not slick valentine to itself. Not that what’s on screen is false – it’s just a very narrow view of the personalities concerned. And for close observers of the orchestra, that specificity is painful to watch, because you want reality to be entirely this way.”