John WILLIAMS (b. 1932)
Celebrating
Simone Porter (violin)
Robert deMaine (cello)
Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel
rec. live, 24-27 January, 2019, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 483 6647 [49:11 + 46:18]
John Williams is undoubtedly the most successful composer of film music in the history. After more than 60 years in the business and numerous awards – including five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven BAFTA Awards and 24 Grammy Awards his name is forever inscribed in the history books. Add to this no less than 51 Academy Awards Nominations – second only to Walt Disney – and one realises his greatness. Many of the greatest box-office successes during the last 45 years have been adorned with his characteristic scores, and several themes are forever etched into the memory of millions of movie-goers. Many of those can be heard in the present programme. It should also be stressed that besides his copious work in the movie business he has also found time to write music for the concert stage, and for 13 years (1980-1993) he was principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, successor of the legendary Arthur Fiedler.
His assignments also stretches to compositions of celebratory music, most famously the fanfares to four Olympic Games, of which the first, for the Summer Games in Los Angeles in 1984, fittingly opens this programme. Brash, brassy, festive, rhythmically incisive and melodically catchy, this piece summarizes the Williams sound, which often is on a grand scale, and much of what follows confirms this. Many of the films were also muscular, larger-than-life stories: disaster films like Earthquake and Towering Inferno, Superman, Star Wars – the list is long. But he is far from one-dimensional. Often one knows, after a couple of bars only, that this is typical film music. He has learnt a lot from the greats of yesteryear – Korngold quite often peeps above his shoulder – but he is also an individualist, like Korngold, and his own fingerprints can be found everywhere. At the same time he is a chameleon and borrows unabashedly: Tchaikovsky (a bombast if ever there was one), isn’t that Bártok? – and Shostakovich isn’t far away there – he was also a great film music writer. But Williams’s themes are very much his own; they are short, rhythmic, easy to remember, and he hammers them persistently into the head of the listener/viewer – Wagner has taught him a thing or two about leitmotifs. But where Wagner often thins out the massed sonorities to transparent chamber music, Williams becomes so overwhelming that one wishes he would calm down. Generally I listen as a concert goer, not as cinema visitor, and in honesty I have to admit that I have seen few of his films. The one I have vivid memories of is Jaws and I have a feeling that it is there he is at his very best, most inventive. The two excerpts from that score on this disc are excellent examples of his art, even though I miss the haunting main theme which still produces goose-pimples, not through excessive volume but by restraint and suggestion. Quite a lot here is predictably hard-hitting. But suddenly it happens that he calms down, for instance when we reach the theme from Schindler’s List, then we are in a quite different mood, calm, serene – and so beautifully played here by Simone Porter. But this piece, less than four minutes long, is followed by Adventures on Earth from ET, and there we are back in the swashbuckling style – Korngold wasn’t bad either in that event; listen to Robin Hood or Captain Blood – the themes are catchy, the orchestration skilful and after 3:30 Williams (or ET) calms down with an intimate theme played by a solo oboe, like a rural idyll somewhere in Wales.
I haven’t seen the Indiana Jones films either but was caught by the Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra, enticing with its jagged rhythms and breakneck tempo. But where was the motorbike? Marion’s Theme is hauntingly atmospheric with the final section featuring brittle woodwind with harp accompaniment. Raiders March is catchy – and noisy – but the theme is certainly something one leaves the cinema humming. A cup of orientalism is a feature of Sayuri’s Theme from Memories of a Geisha with a really beautiful melody for the principal cello, lovingly played by Robert de Maine. On the soundtrack it was Yo-Yo Ma.
The Star Wars films are possibly the best-known films in history and the score for the original 1977 movie was rated as the greatest American film score of all time by the American Film Institute. Throne Room and Finale is certainly a worthy tribute to the beginning of that series of films. The other selections recorded here are from later incarnations and the Adagio from Star Wars: The Force Awakens is from as recently as 2015. It must rank among the gems of John Williams’s output.
The encore, the Superman March is another swashbuckler and it is greeted with hilarious ovations from an enthusiastic audience in the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Until then there were no signs of an audience present. Recorded with the composer present at four consecutive concerts this is part of the LA Philharmonic’s centenary celebrations and it also marks Gustavo Dudamel’s first ten years as principal conductor.
As for alternative recordings there is on Sony a 4-CD set with John Williams himself conducting various orchestras, where there is also music written for the concert podium. Remember also Zubin Mehta’s pioneering recording of the Star Wars Suite and Close Encounters with the LA Philharmonic from his sojourn as principal conductor, which lasted from 1962 until 1978.
John Williams’s film music has stood the test of time and even though his own recordings may be the most authentic, both Zubin Mehta and Gustavo Dudamel have presented worthy alternatives. The playing time for Dudamel’s twofer is only 95 minutes but it retails at the price of one full price CD and is good value for the money. The quality of the recording is excellent.
Göran Forsling
Contents
CD 1 [49:11]
1. Olympic Fanfare and Theme [4:00]
2. Excerpts from Close Encounters of the Third Kind [8:28]
3. Out to Sea and The Shark Cage Fugue from Jaws [4:24]
Three Selections from Harry Potter
4. Hedwig’s Theme [4:58]
5. Fawkes the Phoenix [3:42]
6. Harry’s Wondrous World [4:41]
7. Theme from Schindler’s List [3:41]
8. Adventures on Earth from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial [10:25]
9. The Flight to Neverland from Hook [4:49]
CD 2 [46:18]
1. Theme from Jurassic Park [5:57]
Three Selections from Indiana Jones
2. Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra [3:07]
3. Marion’s Theme [4:11]
4. Raiders March [5:08]
5. Sayuri’s Theme from Memoirs of a Geisha [4:17]
Three Selections from Star Wars
6. The Imperial March [3:03]
7. Yoda’s Theme [3:36]
8. Throne Room and Finale [7:58]
9. Adagio from Star Wars; The Force Awakens [4:34]
10. Superman March [4:26]
