Post by erik on Nov 18, 2023 22:53:32 GMT -5
John Williams is in the Classical Works Spotlight this week, thanks to Zubin Mehta.
John Williams: SUITE FROM “STAR WARS”
It is not hard to believe that John Williams, due to his dozens of incredible film scores and appearances with orchestras in both America and the world at large, may be the most-listened-to composer in history. While film music was for a very long time not taken anywhere as seriously as, say, symphonic writing, or opera, there had been composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, and Bernard Herrmann who had helped to elevate it to a certain art form. Indeed, Williams had learned a lot from these composers; and he also had first-hand experience as a pianist in scoring orchestras led by Henry Mancini and Jerry Goldsmith, and on the soundtrack of the 1961 film version of West Side Story. But the more “serious” connoisseurs of music still weren’t convinced…until the 1970’s, that is. In that decade, Williams became a mega-star on the basis of his score for director Steven Spielberg’s 1975 horror/suspense classic Jaws. Two years later, in 1977, Spielberg’s close friend George Lucas tabbed Williams to do the score for what seemed at first to be nothing more than a high-tech (but old-fashioned) space opera in Star Wars. This film, which spawned a monstrous multi-billion dollar film franchise that was to go on into the new millennium, about the battle between the Evil Empire and rebel forces led by Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), gave Williams his second Grammy and his second Oscar for film scoring. Shortly after the success of that film, Zubin Mehta, the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, with Williams’ blessing, recorded a suite of music from Star Wars, which consisted of the following: (1) Main Title; (2) Princess Leia’s Theme; (3) The Little People; (4) Cantina Band; (5) The Battle; and (6) The Throne Room. The resulting recording, paired with a suite of music from Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, was hugely popular, and it led to decades more success for Williams.
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ZUBIN MEHTA (London)
Included:
SUITE FROM “CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND” (featuring the Women of the Los Angeles Master Chorale)
John Williams: SUITE FROM “STAR WARS”
It is not hard to believe that John Williams, due to his dozens of incredible film scores and appearances with orchestras in both America and the world at large, may be the most-listened-to composer in history. While film music was for a very long time not taken anywhere as seriously as, say, symphonic writing, or opera, there had been composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, and Bernard Herrmann who had helped to elevate it to a certain art form. Indeed, Williams had learned a lot from these composers; and he also had first-hand experience as a pianist in scoring orchestras led by Henry Mancini and Jerry Goldsmith, and on the soundtrack of the 1961 film version of West Side Story. But the more “serious” connoisseurs of music still weren’t convinced…until the 1970’s, that is. In that decade, Williams became a mega-star on the basis of his score for director Steven Spielberg’s 1975 horror/suspense classic Jaws. Two years later, in 1977, Spielberg’s close friend George Lucas tabbed Williams to do the score for what seemed at first to be nothing more than a high-tech (but old-fashioned) space opera in Star Wars. This film, which spawned a monstrous multi-billion dollar film franchise that was to go on into the new millennium, about the battle between the Evil Empire and rebel forces led by Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), gave Williams his second Grammy and his second Oscar for film scoring. Shortly after the success of that film, Zubin Mehta, the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, with Williams’ blessing, recorded a suite of music from Star Wars, which consisted of the following: (1) Main Title; (2) Princess Leia’s Theme; (3) The Little People; (4) Cantina Band; (5) The Battle; and (6) The Throne Room. The resulting recording, paired with a suite of music from Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, was hugely popular, and it led to decades more success for Williams.
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ZUBIN MEHTA (London)
Included:
SUITE FROM “CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND” (featuring the Women of the Los Angeles Master Chorale)