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Interview conducted in 2005 posted online just today http://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/john-williams-interview-its-not-hard-work-that-makes-success-its-sustained-hard-work-that

A wonderful story and his horn performance was just beautiful.

...AND he has to make it high-pitched AND he has to make it soft. It's like Williams is writing tricky music on purpose.

That's actually something his wife built. She also built one in Santa Fe (not she, personally, but you know what I mean). So combined, I guess you could say they have some 6-7 houses!

Williams has several houses. I think I've heard the mention of at least 3 or 4 different ones over the years (LA, New York, Boston and one up in the Berkshire mountains). The LA one seems to have been his main house for decades. It's in the same general area he's lived since his adolescent years (Glendale/Westwood).

I assume this has been 11 pages of no news regarding Williams recording the new Star Wars score?

War of the Worlds (1953), Magnum Force and Rogue One again. On this recent bout of listens, Your Father Would Be Proud of You has leapt ahead to a favoured track. Wish there were some of the end credits on the disc. Feels disjointed going from Hope to the suites.

Great stuff..."Anxiety" is my favourite!

Samantha. No, very rarely. She never appeared much to begin with. It's his daughter Jennifer who has been his accompaniment for most of the events. I'm guessing both. He's accomodated near Lenox for the concerts, but then he might make an extended stay out of it and buzz up to his mountain cabin/house for a few extra days.

It's definitely one of my 3 favorite T.Newman scores.

This Dutch song (very famous in Holland and Belgium) by the late Ramses Shaffy originates from 1972 and it strongly reminds me of Saving Private Ryan's main theme. They're not the same notes but the feeling it evokes is exactly the same. Alex

I mean, it's called "Han Solo and the Princess" and the concert arrangement includes a quote of Leia's theme so calling it just Han's theme is a stretch. EDIT: Although now I think about it, I suppose you could argue that the main melody of that arrangement is Han's theme and the quote of Leia's theme is the "and the Princess" part. It's all splitting hairs anyway, beautiful melody.

Also has/had one in Telluride, I recall from an oldish interview. Up in the mountains somewhere.

Well okay, if they insist...

Spielberg said he'd never do an Indiana Jones film without Ford, Williams and Kahn, IIRC.

Sounds like a must have release!

Illuminati, man!

But Spielberg confirmed that one. I'd much rather have Bridge of Spies than The BFG.

We need to have spies surveilling each of them to report each and every movement Williams does!

It's not a conspiracy, nor Williams trying to cover up anything. It's a simple matter of publishing rights. The original 5-movement TESB Concert Suite as well as the 1978 Star Wars Symphonic Suite and the 4-movement ROTJ concert suite were originally published by Warner/Chappell, which is now being administered/licensed internationally by Faber Music. Warner/Chappell had the three original Star Wars concert suites available for rental in their catalogue, but in 2015 these three suites were recalled/withdrew from their catalogue by Lucasfilm (that Italian performance is indeed the last public one). It's also possible that Williams and his management want to have all Star Wars music under a single publishing umbrella (Hal Leonard, which is the de facto official Williams publisher of his concert and film works for concert performance), so let's hope they will be available again in the future for anyone who wants to perform the original suites.

- The BFG: um, ok - Earthquake / Poseidon Adventure / Towering Inferno (never quite got the love for the main title for this last one in particular): TTI is hugely overrated, Earthquake great fun - The Cowboys (generally I find Williams' americana westerns to be largely unimpressive and boring, apart from Missouri Breaks but that's another whole beast) were there any beyond The Cowboys? - The River it's not wholly successful but has lovely parts - and is one of the increasingly rare post-SW instances of a different Williams - Home Alone (both) - and by extension the first two Potter scores when they channel that sound while they can become overkill, especially in their overt sweetness, i would rate them as prime examples of Williams' russian style; not liking this basically means not liking huge parts of his whole output - Amistad (apart from Sierra Leone and some other track which I dig a lot, I really hate how eclectic it is. I mean, there are lots of eclectic JW scores out there, two which I love that are JP and POA but this one... sheesh... I don't know, it just doesn't flow) sort of, though there still are at least some respectable highlights - Stepmom (the cringe is real) it's boring but not in an unpleasant way, still, yes

Of all Spielberg's films in the last 4 decades, if I had to pick one to miss out on a John Williams score? It's Bridge of Spies.

We do not discuss the vulgan business of money! But you can assume Williams is very well off.

Gia will score!

We're not totally sure he hasn't begun Ready Player One are we? Isn't it possible that he's been doing that concurrently with SW?

I think that's the beauty and strength of the score actually. Of the trilogy, TTT probably channels the natural Tolkien-esque ambience of Middle-Earth best. Something like "Gandalf the White" may not feel as overtly distinctive as the location/journey cues of FOTR, but it feels so inherently Tolkien, where Shore seems to write for a deeper subtext. This gets somewhat lost in the grandeur and scale of ROTK, but that's fine. One of the beautiful things about the trilogy is that each score, while part of a whole, has something unique to offer in spirit and craft.

That was actually a very interesting arrangement of the Han Solo and The Princess theme. The rest of the suite is lackluster and proves what is most important is the composer/conductor rather than the orchestra. LSO has never sounded so amateur in the rest of the works and a mediocre mix as well. For example, in the Princess Leia theme, the original OST has a deeply yearning quality since the high note of every phrase is held much longer than here. That must have been a direction from JW since it happens regardless of what the instrumentation is and really makes the theme feel so much more longing in a Tristan und Isolde way which makes since since JW thought of this as sort of a Vertigo longing and Herrmann used Tristan und Isolde as his model for that theme. And what's with the trumpets being so far left in the mix? It just feels cheep. I assume this is an old recording that was made to cheaply capitalize on the unexpected success of SW without any real attention to detail or love. BUT, the Han Solo and the Princess was interesting in the way they interwove the Leia theme.

Bespin, you'd have to remove the 60s titles from your list. Konstantinos specifically asked for scores from 1970 onwards.

That's like picking your least favourite of six different cheesecakes.

John Wick: Chapter 2. I think it was very entertaining. Watched the first one just yesterday. The second film has clearly a much higher budget and it's beautifully shot action film. Intellectually, there is, of course, nothing there, but it cranks up the ridiculous vibe the first one had and runs with. It's what every sequel should be... sort of like Raid 2 meets The Dark Knight. With a pinch of visual Skyfall splendour. Karol

(1) Thomas and the King (2) Thomas and the King (3) Thomas and the King (4) Thomas and the King (5) Thomas and the King (6) Thomas and the King (7) Thomas and the King (8) Thomas and the King (9) Thomas and the King (10) Thomas and the King

He does indeed use a similar fast tempo in concerts. Completely mystifying to me...as you said, it totally changes the piece. I'd even go so far as to say it ruins it.

Yesterday the sixth and last article of The John Williams Compositional Techniques has been published. This week the subject is how to compose virtuoso music. https://www.leandrogardini.com/single-post/2017/02/18/Williams---The-Virtuoso-Composer I hope you like it. Enjoy!

I think this theory would really have some legs if Williams didn't use it in TFA, but he did so yeah................

You are perfectly right... This theme is a great forgotten one! I'm afraid we'll have to wait an album called "The John Williams & Georges Lucas Collaboration"! I stopped you video after 1 minute... that's an awefull interpretation. My reference for the concert version is still the Charles Gerhardt version.

All I'm saying is that if I ever decided to put video game console investment style money into mobile gaming, equivalent to a $300 system and five or six games at $50 apiece, kill me. Just fucking kill me. A few free games or maps from my Google Rewards money, sure, because it's not real world money.

No, to me it doesn't matter if it's the original OST or the expanded version. Sitting down and listening to film music on your stereo is a totally different experience to me than evaluating how a score works in a movie. Two different worlds, even (one primarily appealing to my music interest, the other to my film interest). So I cannot 'converge' these things into one single list. But I could make two different lists, of course, like I did in the 'best of' thread.

Marion's Theme can now also be heard on the Amazon MP3 listing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X3VGXZ4 Also, strangely, for some reason there's a second Amazon MP3 listing, and that one reveals the track TIMES of every track! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WLKXNTV/ 01 The Adventures of Mutt from "Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (3:34) 02 Dry Your Tears, Afrika from "Amistad" (3:39) 03 The BFG from "The BFG" (7:28) 04 With Malice Toward None from "Lincoln" (4:42) 05 The Duel from "The Adventures of Tintin" (3:10) 06 A New Beginning from "Minority Report" (3:36) 07 Escapades for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra from "Catch Me If You Can": Movement 1: Closing In (3:00) 08 Escapades for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra from "Catch Me If You Can": Movement 2: Reflections (7:38) 09 Escapades for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra from "Catch Me If You Can": Movement 3: Joy Ride (5:31) 10 Marion's Theme from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (3:58) 11 Hymn to the Fallen from "Saving Private Ryan" (4:19) 12 Dartmoor, 1912 from "War Horse" (6:54) 13 Viktor's Tale from "The Terminal" (4:32) 14 Prayer for Peace from "Munich" (3:32) 15 Immigration and Building from "The Unfinished Journey" (5:21) 16 With Malice Toward None from "Lincoln" (Alternate Version) (3:20) TOTAL TIME - 74:14

1. Star Wars 2. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 3. Schindler's List 4. The Empire Strikes Back 5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind 6. Jaws 7. Raiders of the Lost Ark 8. Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone 9. Jurassic Park 10. Hook

I knew that the french title (French, a much more rich and evolved language than English), would reveal this important information. Cool.

The Lost World Theme (the album version especially) is absolutely a top tier Williams composition. It is not only exhilarating from start to finish, thanks to the tribal percussion beats and dark string and brass timbres, but is filled to the brim with ingenious other-worldly rhythmic melodies. It is I think one of the first and prime examples of Williams pairing a more broadly sweeping longer-note melody (in this case, the minor-key theme that is uniquely harmonised solely with major chords), with a more rhythmic counter-theme (the rapid, modal motif, which in a way is actually a sped up version of the longer melody), over the timpani/bass ostinato. Rey's Theme interestingly has a similar structure (although the rhythmic counter-theme doubles as an ostinato, and he instead throws in a second counter-theme for added variety... both of which build on top of each other before the real melody kicks in). Williams is quite deft at weaving ostinati in and out (e.g. Superman, Jaws) but after The Lost World theme, he really went all out with competing melodic contours.

Absolutely fabulous. You could tell these young people care about that music, because it was obviously very well practiced and rehearsed, and in some parts better than any world famous orchestra. The first violinist's Schindler's List performance was an exception among exceptional. My biggest complaint, if I can come up with one, was that The Lost World was probably too fast, which lent the piece great energy, but some intricate rhythms and motifs were swept a little under the rug by rushed players.

Not a gif admittedly but will have to do:

I'm only in if they'll play the entirety of Dracula.