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Director: Dick Lundy
Release Date: February 24, 1947
Stars: Andy Panda, Woody Woodpecker
Rating: ★
Review:

When James Culhane left Walter Lantz, Dick Lundy remained Lantz’s sole director, until he left too at the end of the decade.

Being a more gentle director than Culhane, Lundy conceived a short-lived series of Musical Moments, in which classical music was the driving force. ‘Musical Moments from Chopin’ is the first of three, in which Woody Woodpecker joins Andy Panda in a piano recital of Frédéric Chopin tunes at a barnyard concert.

Unfortunately, the result is a very uneven cartoon: there’s practically no conflict between Woody and Andy, the driving force of such wonderful piano concert cartoons like ‘Rhapsody Rabbit‘ (1946) and ‘The Cat Concerto‘ (1947). Even worse, Lundy wastes a lot of time on gags involving the audience. In the end it’s a drunken horse who ends the concert by starting a fire.

Both the animals in the audience and the anthropomorphic flames have an old-fashioned 1930s-look. The complete cartoon is remarkably slow and unfunny, and pales when compared to its contemporary concert cartoons.

Watch ‘Musical Moments from Chopin’ yourself and tell me what you think:

‘Musical Moments from Chopin’ is available on the DVD-set ‘The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection’