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Weight has nothing to do with it!

It was an enjoyable concert. In the first part they played some music from s-f films: A short piece from Metropolis by Godfried Huppertz. We got to hear a Star Trek medley, consisting of snippets of different scores: Alexander Courage's theme with chorus, a snippet of Goldsmith's Enterprise cue and Voyager theme, Rosenman, Eidelman and they ended on the very end of Giacchino's end credits (the order is probably a bit off). Then they played Mychael Nyman's Gattaca and John Williams' soprano-led Where Dreams Are Born from A.I. (exactly the same as the album piece), which has been performed apparently for the very first time. Ildikó Raimondi's rendidtion was solid, but not exactly spectacular (probably a bit too strong). And the first part ended with the slightly abbreviated end credits from David Arnold's Independence Day. It lasted less than an hour. I liked it, but there was something missing - probably because so many of those pieces were quite short and it seemed slightly all over the place. The second part was much longer (probably around 90 minutes and dedicated exclusively to Horner. They opened with his brilliant Universal fanfare, which I might even prefer to Goldsmith's, and then played a suite from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which was basically the Courage material from the overture, seguing directly into the end credit material with the omission of Spock theme, sadly. Next, a piece was a from Braveheart which, at least partially, was taken from end credits (with solos on uillean pipes). A slightly longer medley of themes presented the themes from Willow (main theme), A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, The Mask of Zorro and The Rocketeer (fittingly ending on a rousing hornerian climax from that very score). Again, good stuff, but all the segments were really brief. The last short standalone film score piece of the evening was The Ludlows from Legends of the Fall. What followed were two centrepieces of the evening - the longer suites from both Avatar and Titanic. The first one was actually very effective, using penny whistle (I thin) and flute solos, some interesting live percussion effects and chorus. I must be quite a challenge to perform this music live, given that the actual score had endless layers of synthetic effects and stuff like that. But it worked. They performed some bits from Jake's Flight, The Bioluminescence of the Night, Scorched Earth (just that Willow-like fanfare) and some passages from War (including that cool fanfare near the start which was recorded originally exclusively for the album). And then Titanic, which seems to be a variation on some of the suites performed before - Sissel's vocals performed by opera soprano (a very different kind of performance), Southampton segment with the actual chorus (sounds much better, trust me) and then it ended with what can be heard in the final suite on Back to Titanic album with two themes played contrapuntally (or very similar to that piece, anyway). At that point Horner was to pick up the Max Steiner award and when he was approaching the scene, they were playing the Spider-Man theme. And here is a major disappointment - it was probably the only opportunity to hear it without all the synths and modern percussion. But you couldn't hear it, because the audience were clapping all the way through. What I can say, though, is that it is actually a very strong tune indeed, certainly among the best modern superhero themes (if not THE best). Anyway, Horner is getting the award and gets emotional. Crying almost. And they call him "the finest contemporary composer" (I'm not sure I heard "one of") and "Vienna's son" (apparently hid dad is from there). And the endless applause. At this point it turned into too much of a drama and schmaltz. But then again, this show is called Hollywood in Vienna so maybe that's the point. In any case, Horner indeed seems to be a very quiet and shy person. But, from my experiences with meeting other musicians, they mostly all are. Two of Horner's songs were also performed: one from An American Tale and one from Land Before Time (which was the final piece performed that evening). Both were extremely cheesy, especially the latter where the singer Deborax Cox was walking in between the aisles and at one point holding the composer by hand... You get the idea. While it's easy to be cynical about Horner and his place among film music giants, especially with all the cheesy awarding ceremony, it realized how big of a part he played in formation of my film music tastes. There's no denying he's got quite an output and the concert clearly showed that he could be just as successful in a concert hall as Williams or Goldsmith. At least in terms of broad audiences' appeal. All in all, an enjoyable evening. The playing was certainly competent and the musicians managed to convey that Hollywood swagger, which is not that obvious to achieve by a concert orchestra (not typically, anyway). Finally, I got to meet some fellow JWFans in person - Marian, ChrisAfonso, publicist. And some other people - Tim Burden (just briefly) and Thor (whom I will see again on Monday). Which was quite surreal, but really nice. Pity there was no chance to get any autographs or pictures. A bummer, to be sure... Oh and there is another thread dedicated to this topic, lemoncurd. You can find it here. EDIT: I just read an audio stream of the concert will be available to listen from tomorrow. Karol

Randy Kerber, piano soloist on The Book Thief at Fox in LA pic.twitter.com/EkmcXScKzf

Kelsey grammer for Williams biopic, please!

Neil Tyson says on Twitter it should be titled "Angular Momentum".

Michael Giacchino - LOST (Season 1,2,3 OSTs) Inspired by the discussion in the TV thread recently I dug these out and listened to them all. While I like this music, it truly isn't until seasons 4-6 for me that these scores became unbelievably good. All my favorite themes are from those seasons I think, which makes sense as the plot started advancing then as well as the emotional journeys for many characters ended. From these early seasons I enjoy most the cues featuring the Departure Theme and Desmond's Theme. And of course the Traveling Theme, but even that gets it's best variations in the later seasons.

Long hair, slightly gormless expression. The guy is CLEARLY inspired by Alan Davies! Don't you guys watch QI?

Another comment, not much but still nice: http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/the-book-thief-review-roundup

I can hardly wait to see Dain and his hearty swine...I mean boar riders!

Manos: The Hands of Fate Ok technically we watched the MST3K episode that featured this movie. Damn, what an awful movie! Easily one of the worst ever made.

Yeah, definitely try the folks in Maine. With this sort of thing, you'll rarely see any ensemble advertising, "Hey! We'd like to play your music!" Even when the New York Philharmonic schedules a week of "new music," those pieces chosen are limited to works for soloists, most of which are written by people already associated with the NYP/Juilliard. There is an annoying lack of enthusiasm about this kind of thing. Your best bet is to just put yourself out there, even if it seems fruitless. Send scores/mockups/real recordings/whatever to any organization whose mailing or email address you can get your hands on. Be persistent about it.

I really enjoyed the concert and finally was able to meet fellow filmmusic enthusiasts and also some jwfan members like publicist, Karol, Marian, Markus and Thor. Again big thanks to Thor for organizing this gettogether and to Marian for arranging the location. I agree with Marian that there definetly was a problem with the orchestral dynamics that lead to many main lines and themes being buried within the orchestration. I am glad they did the medleys because otherwise we would have had even less variety in the short time a concert takes. Of course i would have loved to hear longer developed pieces of Horners older scores like Willows, Aliens, Braveheart or Star Trek II but the compromise just had to be taken in such a mainstream event.

I love how Moffat and Gatiss shot down his idea pretty much as soon as he brought it up

Some pics of the sound enginner Victor Pesanto (Working on DOS) Taiko time! Mr. Pope with some sheet music...surrounded by tibetan gongs)

Amen! I need some in this drab sound designy modern film music environment. Problem is a lot of reviewers don't like anymore when music carries a scene. They want it relegated to the background, or just "loud noise" like RCP scores because we've gotten use to that. Of course it's just this guy's opinion. I just with a director would let loose Williams music once in a while, the only time it happened in the last decade it Memoirs of a Geisha that

My feel is that the issue lies with the average audience's perception of what the music does within a movie. Williams still writes in the "old-fashioned" (hate the term, but it's for brevity's sake) way of using dynamics (i.e. soft/loud) within the orchestral/symphonic language, so in this sense it's natural he weaves in and out of the narrative using the whole range of musical dynamics, from pianissimo to fortissimo, going through mezzoforte, mezzopiano and so on. Let's be frank with ourselves: this is not what film music does now, especially in Hollywood movies. We're now to a point where the audience is getting to notice a scoring approach that follows with dynamics the action on screen, because most of today's film scores instead seems to be just blaring-out-loud all the time or unobstrusive/unnoticeable/sound design-y all the time.

1. A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 2. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND 3. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL 4. JURASSIC PARK 5. IMAGES 6. NIXON 7. BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY 8. STAR WARS: EPISODE VI: THE RETURN OF THE JEDI 9. INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE 10. EMPIRE OF THE SUN

By the way, Karol, let me repeat my recommendation: Aaron J. Kernis' Symphony in Waves. There's only one cue of it on YouTube it seems, and that's not the one that sounds like Davis' Matrix, but the "rippling" lines in Davis' scores are pretty much straight out of the first movement. Cool stuff.

While travelling from Vienna to London: Memoirs of a Geisha Suite, War Horse, Lincoln, The Adventures of Tintin, 1st Violin Concerto, Angela's Ahes Suite (with narrator), War of the Worlds, Jaws (original album). All of that pretty much non-stop. Karol

Beorn This Way.

Ah, Venice.

I miss a bit of intrusion. Everything today is so boringly understated.