Obituaries : Irwin Kostal; Film, TV Orchestrator

Irwin Kostal, a Hollywood orchestrator and conductor who won Academy Awards for his work in “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music,” has died. He was 83.

Kostal, who also won a Grammy for “The Sound of Music” album and a television Emmy as arranger and conductor on “The Garry Moore Show,” died Nov. 23 of a heart attack at his Studio City home.

Born in Chicago, Kostal began his musical career playing the piano when he was 11. He taught himself musical arranging by studying the symphonic scores of composers such as Beethoven and Debussy at his local public library. Eventually he worked his way into a position as staff arranger for “Design for Listening,” a Chicago-based NBC radio show.

After moving to New York, Kostal landed a job as arranger for Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” a post he held from 1950 to 1955. He next worked on Moore’s variety show for five years and won acclaim for his work on such 1960s television specials as “Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall” and the Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation of “Brigadoon.”

Kostal earned two more Emmy nominations, as conductor on “The Julie Andrews Show” in 1966 and for his musical direction on the Kirk Douglas musical, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” in 1973.

In the 1960s, he began to orchestrate for Broadway. He worked with Leonard Bernstein on the original stage version of “West Side Story” and with Sid Ramin on “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

He earned a recommendation to Walt Disney, who brought him to Hollywood to score films. Kostal earned three more Oscar nominations for his musical adaptation of Disney’s “Mary Poppins” in 1964, “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” in 1971 and “Pete’s Dragon” in 1977.

He also handled the music for the 1982 revision of the Disney classic “Fantasia,” originally released in 1940.

“I’m not just wearing (original conductor Leopold) Stokowski’s straitjacket,” he told The Times at that time. “I’m also wearing Mickey Mouse’s.”

Nevertheless, Kostal warmed to the task.

“Believe it or not,” he said, “we do have the liberty of changing details, even orchestration, here and there. We also can play a little with the beat, making stresses coincide even more accurately with what we see on the screen.

“Still, we approach this with no delusions. We are dubbing the sound track for an actor on the screen. It isn’t all that different from what Lalo Schifrin did for Sam Wanamaker when the actor played the conductor in ‘The Competition.’ I don’t claim to be impersonating Stokowski, God forbid. I’m not replacing him. I’m just doing a difficult job, and I’m doing my best.”

At his death, Kostal was president of the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers. In 1992 he received the organization’s Golden Score Award for his lifetime work.

He is survived by three children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be made to the Young Musician’s Foundation, 195 S. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, Calif. 90212.