artguy360

I would love JW going in either direction. As long as it is distinct and not simply derivative of his previous action music. I'll take anything from JW since I never expected him to still be so active at his current age. Something lean with a period touch would be cool.

The idea of JW writing a short, punchy, action driven score with a bit of an edge to it is very exciting to me. However, in his late era, little of JW's action music has been very distinct. I fear we would get more copy and pasting of his past action music with a few changes thrown in.

Brief update in The Times interview today when they asked him what’s next: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/john-williams-maestro-of-the-melodic-spark-0w6mbp5fm
 
“Most imminently there's a piano concerto to be written for Emanuel Ax ("I finished the first movement yesterday")”

Really enjoyed the newest episode. Jane Eyre, in particular, is a special JW score.

Does anyone else notice the proto-HP1 sound to much of that Hook score?
 
Unrelated thought, listening to this release a 3rd time through, the music I enjoy most is all the Face of Pan & You are the Pan stuff. Such beautiful melodies.

In general I'm not really huge on Hook as a score, despite having many great individual moments.  Maybe if they kept the songs it would have made more sense but the thematic bloat and consistently sugary tone make it hard to enjoy as a complete score.  (compared to the more thematically concise Home Alone or the more tonally and stylistically varied Sorcerer's Stone)

not sure if I've posted this before. In 2019 I went shopping in a supermarket in Hamburg and there was this kiddy ride machine in the entrance area....  
 
 
  20190124 184423.mp3  
 
 

Today I'm finally able to post in this thread!
 
In the dream I just had, I was in a white van that John Williams was driving.  We were in New York City en route to some really tall building (maybe a hotel?  It reminded me of the Tipton Hotel from Suite Life).  I was tracking the end of the journey on my phone; we were going around the building, circling around to the entrance, trying to navigate a crowd of people.  As we were closing in on the building, my dad told me he didn't trust the building's wi-fi.
 
Then the dream devolved into some Phineas And Ferb episode where two Perrys were beating up Doofenshmirtz on a cruise ship.
 
 
Fixed.

I think the earliest I would personally go is Jane Eyre and the latest is The Force Awakens.
 
I don't know the 60s stuff well enough to really argue their greatness though I have heard a bunch and have my favorites. I dig Checkmate most, I can appreciate there are consensus picks like How to Steal a Million or The Reivers, but Jane Eyre is the earliest to really hit me in the John Williams. 
 
2001 with AI or Harry Potter feels like the furthest back anybody could go for their latest pick before I'd give them the stink eye. Prisoner of Azkaban still feels like my most recent benchmark for everything I want from a Williams score, at least on that scale, while I would say Force Awakens is the latest to compel me as an overall piece, rather than just enjoying the many highlights. 

"I wonder if they love JJ Abrams and Ben Burtt as much as I do--those two are like brothers to me."
...
"Oh, my."

Really enjoyed the newest episode. Jane Eyre, in particular, is a special JW score.

The concert was an incredible concert. The Beethoven Triple Concerto was played very well. I really loved the Schindler's List Trio (that as far as I'm aware was a world premiere). Anne-Sophie Mutter is amazing as always, and the anecdote about violins in space was interesting. Scherzo for Violin and Motorcycle was a lot of fun, as was Across the Stars. My second John Williams concert was awesome, just like the one from April of last year.

A truly magnificent evening! The Maestro was in top form and still sharp as a nail (except only a couple self-described “senior moments”, and during one I helped him remember Sean Connery’s name!). The new version of “Scherzo” was great fun and very much tailored for Anne-Sophie’s style, but the bigger highlight for me was the new version of “Anakin’s Theme” that was also done for her. It took the changes from the version debuted at Tanglewood this past summer and greatly expanded on them, ending on a haunting harp rendition of the Imperial March very similar to what’s played when the character dies at the end of Return of the Jedi - a truly unexpected and chill-inducing callback!
 
My photos:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apparently the concert will be on a streaming service called Stage+ on the 30th.
 
https://www.stage-plus.com/video/live_concert_9HKNCPA3DTN66PBIEHFJAC1M?fbclid=PAAaahYHYn0jmZta7N56Nlxgv9cbjSOlBU9NSKEOxguuTDftD8xtBEn-PJN80_aem_ARqg0JMiooEj5-V7mhtCFMLARPUFEydlEpW-9CTIyK13Qrm0CBZL_xk0AOzc2Vb0dNU

Oh for sure that’s a tremendous piece. One of JW’s all time best. But that’s a little more uplifting & inspiring. 
 
But there’s something just so…achingly beautiful about this composition. It pierces right through you. 
 
What a score
 
 

Also Hatching Baby Raptor. Manages to sound hauntingly beautiful yet unsettling at the same time. A perfect marriage of visuals and music.

Worth bumping this thread since this revision has been expanded upon to now be a new arrangement for Anne-Sophie Mutter, which premiered last night in Pittsburgh. It’s about another minute longer, and the new ending has the harp play a statement of the Imperial March that’s quite reminiscent of the end of the Vader’s Death cue in Return of the Jedi - chilling that a piece about the character’s childhood now directly references his ending. Hopefully this version gets recorded, it was quite lovely and felt generally more ominous than the original.

There was a similar thread recently, about movies being "saved" by the score. I don't know if we agreed on much.
 
As far as 'Home Alone', I doubt that the average moviegoer paid much attention to the music. Macaulay Culkin's cuteness was the magic ingredient.

I think JW did what he so often does when working off a temp track. He makes his music much more emotionally or narratively direct and gives the individual musical components a more interesting phrasing. Similar to The Immolation Scene from ROTS and the piece it is based on. JW heightens the emotions and speaks a little more directly.

Agree.
 
Some of the choral work is absolutely ethereal and seems to connect directly with the soul on an almost tangible level.
 
As someone once put it to me, it makes one miss people one has never met.
 
If Face of Pan was based on Agnes of God, I have to say Williams took that piece and absolutely elevated it into the stratosphere.

It's a good moment, but I get the same feeling not in that track, but in "The Face of Pan"/"You are the Pan". Always have. One of the best John Williams compositions of all time, that one.

I really liked how the score is used in the movie. The restrained use of piano and strings only for the first half leads to a gradual opening of the orchestral colour in the second half that matches our gradual discovery of the fantasy. Gorgeous!

I wish more people would watch this movie and post about the score in this thread! 
 
I feel like this score is truly unique among Joe Hisaishi's work for Studio Ghibli in that it has some elements characteristic of his past work, while also being pervasively contemplative, somber, restrained, ans striking in style while also being almost entirely devoid of the child-like, lyrical warmth of his past Ghibli works.

I just watched the movie subbed in earlier today. When I first listened to the soundtrack weeks ago, I didn't quite know what to make of it. The sparseness of the sound, the very piano-centric nature of the music (even for a Joe Hisaishi score), and some of the repeated motifs that seemed designed to startle, it was all a little odd to me.
 
Now, having seen the movie, the score is perfect. I wouldn't want it to be any different from what it is. Everything about it, the sparseness, the piano, the startling moments, all work to accompany the main character's journey perfectly.

I just watched the movie subbed in earlier today. When I first listened to the soundtrack weeks ago, I didn't quite know what to make of it. The sparseness of the sound, the very piano-centric nature of the music (even for a Joe Hisaishi score), and some of the repeated motifs that seemed designed to startle, it was all a little odd to me.
 
Now, having seen the movie, the score is perfect. I wouldn't want it to be any different from what it is. Everything about it, the sparseness, the piano, the startling moments, all work to accompany the main character's journey perfectly.