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I wouldn’t necessarily say that there is such a thing as a Philharmoniker "A-Team". Yes, this is a large orchestra that even regularly plays two performances at the same time (for instance one in the opera and one in the Musikverein or on tour) and they do use substitutes to fill out the string section in these cases. However, the vast majority of the players (including most importantly the principals) are always going to be Philharmoniker. It‘s no different here. The huge brass section seems to be there completely even, they had to mobilize everyone for JW‘s music. 😅 IMHO, the only place where the cast of these concerts was sub-par is the concertmaster. The VPO has 4 concertmasters and they often use 2 in concerts. Here, they used only one, Fedor Rudin, and he‘s still very young and inexperienced (he‘s only been with the orchestra for slightly more than a year). The poor guy looked visibly stressed during the concerts. I can’t help but think that someone like Volkhard Steude (probably my favorite of the 4 concertmasters) would‘ve smoothed out some of the communication issues between orchestra and conductor and kept everything more together. But for the most part, I think the issues that arose were due to the orchestra not being familiar with some of the pieces, not because the players weren’t the best the VPO has to offer. Sadly, even the VPO isn’t immune to that.

ALSO: it doesn't say in the post itself, but Gordy said in the comments that it contains 3 1/2 hours of music!

I find there's something deeply touching about many short passages in the score. It's the kind of magic when you have music associated with children's stories but it could only have been written by a very wise (old) man. I feel that Ravel has this quality too.

Marion's theme... the strings are playing all out romantically, one of my favorite memories from the concert! At this rate, are they going to put the entire concert on YouTube? I wouldn't mind right now, because I accidentally let my BluRay/CD combo be delivered to the wrong address 🤪 (I'll get it on the weekend).

Wasn't it rumoured that Palpatine's presence/resurrection originally didn't happen until later in the film? I know everyone's speculated ad nauseum about why Disney withheld basically all footage and artwork of the scenes on Exogol, lending credence to the theory that the film was significant reworked during production (not to mention the opening scene making no sense and coming across like a thoughtless rush-job). Vaguely recall early rumours that Kylo Ren's first visit to Exogol had him encountering a decrepit, unrecognizable man that would later be revealed as Palpatine. So perhaps Williams conceived this new villainous theme to use as an identity for this mysterious character, without giving away this true identity (which the Emperor's Theme obviously would)? Fast forward a few months and Disney's marketing team decided to reveal Palpatine in the marketing, thus negating any need to keep his character a secret in-film, and effectively rendering Williams' new theme pointless. A timeline of when he wrote cues would be helpful; we could identify whether all the heavily Emperor-focused cues were latter revisions. And don't forget lots of the Emperor material is tracked in from ROTS, indicating JW's original intentions didn't feature the theme. Off the top of my head, The Emperor Lives and Falcon Flight were late/revised cues, along with almost everything in reel 7. It looks very stitched together in the spectogram. Definitely not a legitimate concert suite (at least, not recorded as one, it seems like a combination of a bunch of stuff). The ending is definitely artificial, as you've identified, lending credence to the theory the track is partially 6M12 Six Twelve (the destruction of Kijimi) with a fake ending replacing the actual ending of the cue (which is partially heard in the film).

Another week, another underappreciated aspect of the Rise of Skywalker score to explore. This time, let's talk about the big new villain theme, "Psalm of the Sith." (Better known as "Anthem of Evil" but I just cannot stomach that name!) My first two impressions of the theme were I love the wordless acapella statement on track 7 of the OST; closest we get in this score to the "Legend of Darth Plageuis" unreleased snippet from ROTS we all love... This is kind of just an ersatz Imperial March, more technically fluent but maybe not much more original than Giacchino's Imperial Suite themes... Since getting to know the score much better over the past few months, I've grown to appreciate the leitmotif quite a bit more, especially after revelations like what @Ludwig pointed out last week concerning its development in "Advice." It's treated quite flexibly over the course of the TROS soundtrack, seeping into many moments where the theme isn't necessarily at the forefront. There are also some new touches, harmonically, like the emphasis on the minor-triad immediately below the tonic (e.g. Cm <=> Bm) which is fairly rare in Star Wars and a nice alternative to the over-familiar Cm<=>Abm evil progression. My favorite part has got to be the explosive and well-rounded statement of the theme in its full glory during the End Credits. I especially enjoy the build-up starting at 2:06 (shades of the Force Theme's dotted rhythm) and, even more, the delightfully gothic middle section. This 10 measure span has got to be one of the best but least-remarked-upon aspect of this entire score. Here's a transcription. Could have come straight out of Dracula or The Chamber of Secrets. If anyone can discern even a passing hint of this B-section in the score proper, say so, I am just itching to add it to my thematic catalogue.

Yes, the Musikverein does have a roof, and yes, it does reflect sound. I'm not that familiar with them (especially in concert setup - I've seen them now and again, but regularly only at the Staatsoper, where they rarely have their A configuration, and where I don't watch the players closely most of the time. I do know they had several other commitments that day, so some players might have been allocated to those. I don't know how free they are to choose their assignments if they have to split, or if some of them might have skipped the Williams concerts by choice or because the orchestra was already full.

Compared to the Boston Pops concerts, the VPO performances are simply on another level. And the criticizm on the trumpets here seems over the top. They missed one!!! note the whole concerts. That was in Jurassic Park on sunday. Otherwise there were no flubs. I'm not calling timing issues a flub.

Getting the HUGEST goosebumps listening to E.T., Jurassic Park, SW Main Title and The Imperial March (IMHO the best recorded performance of all time)! Fantastic, fantastic performances in amazing sound. Admittedly, there are some minor issues (some of which I actually wouldn't expect from an orchestra of such calibre, prestige and reputation) BUT in this case I must say that they somehow sound kind of charming to me. All in all, an outstanding release and I will cherish unforgetable memories of January concert forever.

The synth pipes still are too goofy, but it's an old-fashioned romantic score that puts a smile on my face when it pops up, nevertheless...

That same opening section of “Birth of the Twins” with the Emperor’s theme is even tracked a second time in TROS not too long afterwards, after Rey arrives on Exegol. “The Patronus Light” also comes to mind. I’d be curious in both cases if they were originally written to be used unaccompanied, or if Williams just happened to like how they sounded that way. It seems the usual practice for JW scores of the last 20 years or so to is to record the chorus and orchestra separately, so there is some chance the opening of “Anthem of Evil” is actually the choral parts of some unknown cue. @Jay Is there any evidence one way or the other if “The Patronus Light” was ever intended to be used as heard on the album, or if the orchestral accompaniment was planned from the beginning?

They really captured the Musikverein acoustics wonderfully on this. It sounds just like it really did sound in the hall.

Never played that one, but that graphic style gives me so much nostalgia

What's giving me the creeps is that most SW fans seem to think RO's score is some kind of masterpiece. We're doomed!

Erm no? That guy looks more like a cheap Williams clone than like me.

I have a story that goes with this. I was in Cannes when the film had its premiere there, but it was the only film for which I didn't get an accredited ticket. Nonetheless, I dressed up in a smoking, and placed myself in the 'rush ticket' line a couple of hours early, comfortably standing under an umbrella (it was raining). Not a lot of people there in the beginning. Then, I heard notes emanating from the speakers near the red carpet. I thought it sounded like LINCOLN, but it wasn't that. But it was clearly Williams, so I immediately thought it was from the score -- which it was (I was probably one of the first people to hear the score). Bizarre, I thought, that such a quintessential British movie had such an Americana-sounding score. But anyways, the premiere drew nearer. I watched Spielberg & co. stroll up the red carpet, but I never got in and went for a beer instead. When listening to the score later on, I thought back on this moment. My 'lukewarm' response at the time still held true when listening comfortably to the CD from home, not only because of the Americana stuff, but because of its whimsical, directionless quality in many of the tracks. It's not a bad score by any stretch of the imagination, but it leaves me relatively cold like most of Williams' post-2005 efforts. Maybe it will grow on me at some point. Williams himself certainly likes it enough to perform it in concerts. But I had expected another HOOK, more or less, with hints of his gorgeous pastoral/British sound, even if his recent track record had shown that he was not "there" anymore.

This flub is not that bad, folks. It's even a little charming. Phew, with all this talk about it, I was expecting far worse.

Whether or not Shore wrote the theme is irrelevant to me: it’s a bloody cool tune. To say it refers to the Misty Mountains just because they’re mentioned in one of the verses is missing the point. It’s clearly for the company, and it should have been maintained.

I have and I am loving every second of it.

Just an aside, I love the Emperor's Theme in this cue! It's so powerful and dark and ugghh I need it!

The Lost World was Williams best action score. I'm not surprised that he still using model cue for action music until today.

Holy shit!

Of all the Yates-directed Potters, I think my favorite is Deathly Hallows 1. It's the most consistent of the franchise, and also one of the darkest - even DH2 has some humour.

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Official soundtrack release coming August 21!

This performance of Close Encounters is not getting near enough praise.

Is this really the new generation of actors to influence a future generation? A bunch of narcissistic assholes? I totally expect dumbshits on the pedestrian side of the internet to behave like this, but a fully grown dude and actor going on a rampage about "trolls"? Good god man, have some class.

On my last reread I breezed through 5 and enjoyed it. Chamber of Secrets OTOH was so tedious and clunky that I almost just gave up. Chekov's nuclear space missile platforms planted just below the surface then left there for the whole thing, everyone conveniently overlooks solutions to problems and just leaves petrified students gathering dust for a year (nobody else on the planet has ripe mandrakes?) or someone messing up every spell endangering everyone (seriously, you have practice brooms but no spare wands?). And that death day party thing. And Harry and Ron going to the teacher's room to tell everyone about the Chamber... but then not doing it. And everything else. Just a pile of paper thin contrivances and conveniences with barely any fluff to disguise them or make them more palatable. 6 is a return to the breezier lighter and more fun atmosphere of the first 3 to provide relief for the characters and the reader after the much more heavy 5th (Harry even suspects Malfoy again and everything), providing better contrast for the dark ending, while also going deeper into Voldemort than ever before to set up 7. So why the hell did movie 6 throw 90% of that latter out the window, and focus on the former by representing it with insufferable cringy garbage? And why is Yates' direction and blocking so stilted and lifeless? And why did somebody suddenly smear their poopoo on the lenses? I think I've only seen this thing once, and not planning to ever suffer through it again. Marathons can go to hell, this movie franchise is a giant failure as far as I'm concerned because of 4-8. (OK, maybe 5-8, 4 can be fun on some days just based on how insanely dumb and over the top it is and didn't necessarily mess up or leave out anything too crucial that the latter ones need, and not that 1 and 2 are great but they weren't the ones to sink it). A book reread marathon will always be infinitely more pleasant and satisfying to me. Even with CoS.

Apparently it is not against Giacchino's programming to impersonate a deity.

Possibly, a kind of "A-Team" of VPO was drawn together for Bernard Haitink's very last concerts last summer. PROMS, Salzburg, Lucerne. Now out on DVD and Bluray for comparison.

If by Giacchino-isms, you mean repetitive loops, lego block music, mostly bland themes, and reductive adapting of Williams' music because of lack of finesse, then yes, that is the man's voice.

Looks shit

I had no problem with the cinematography or color grading - they worked for the movies, IMO (Solo too).

From now on, I'm going to avoid this thread as much as possible, so I'm as fresh as possible when I get the set. As I said over on FSM, it will be a dual experience for me. On the one hand, immense frustration that I had to sell my ticket due to other obligations and the envy I feel towards those who were able to attend, and on the other hand delight in seeing Williams conduct a great concert, in sparkling sound and video. But I want to go in as unprepared as possible, to get the full impact. Haven't ordered it yet, though. Hopefully, it won't sell out.

I've just had a thought while watching some of the video...... now as a disclaimer, obviously I adore John, why else would i be here?! and I really do respect the orchestra as being one of the best in the world, and I was at the concerts in person and honestly couldn't have hoped for a better experience...... so, with that said.... Does anyone here who might be more familiar with the orchestra than I am, (Marian?... I'm thinking maybe you) do we know how much of the Wiener Philharmoniker "A-Team" we have here? I'm thinking about orchestras here in the UK who regularly have players dep their places out to stand in players. I'm assuming it works the same way the world over? I'll never forget the disappointment I felt after attending a Beethoven performance from the Hallé here in Manchester, and talking to one of the woodwind players in the pub afterwards. My friend mentioned that I was coming to the Williams night they were having the following week, and before the sentence was even finished, she rolled her eyes and said "hmmmm, all a bit 'pops' for me, I think I'll be depping that one out." I think my reply was just "wow. well, I couldn't possibly disagree with you more if I tried." I wanted to make some quip about being careful heading back to the busy bar, your musical blinkers might cause problems. But I left it Anyway. I've seen the Hallé on nights where they're obviously the top players, and I've seen nights where they were lacking in certain areas. Sometimes it's down to conductor, but I guess sometimes it's down to the experience of the players too. The majority of this concert recording is absolutely perfect. But, as is the nature of live music.. there are a few little flubs here and there. And yes, we can't forget that Johnny is getting on a bit, and I wouldn't be surprised if by the time the Shark Cage Fugue came round he was waiting for his second wind. None of this takes away from my huge enjoyment of the album. It's a snapshot of a wonderful historic moment in time, and this is how it happened. Having seen a few New Year concerts with the Vienna Phil, and watching some clips of them with Andris Nelsons, I'm noticing some familiar faces but also seeing plenty that aren't there in the Williams footage. Members come and go, I understand that, but I have no idea how regular change over is. So I suppose my question is.... with the orchestra not being well known at all for their "pops" performances, do you think the line up we have at these concerts is made up of the regular players, or more "understudys" who might have been more excited about the prospect of a Williams concert? Was our dear John snubbed by any of the orchestra regulars do we think? Just a thought! Wondering if anyone else has a take on it.

I cautiously sampled it once - a digital promo upon release - but quickly discarded it. There's about 30 minutes extra music, but I didn't want to give any of it more attention than I needed; just enough to say that I had "heard it". I don't want my experience of this great score (and score presentation) 'tainted' by this kind of stuff.

There is already that amazing Emperor's Theme rendition when Tie fighters fly in, before The Emperor Lives. If there was ever an ambiguity who the mysterious Sith lord was... well, that's where it would have ended. Which I doubt anyway, because Ian McDiarmid had his "roll it again" reveal on April 13th 2019. By May 11th 2019 Williams had written just around 25 minutes, based on the news from back then:

I don't know, but the (superior) OST should be widely available, especially after people 'upgraded' (or, as I see it, 'downgraded') to the LLL expansion and got rid of their old albums.

It's on the OST.

That is what keeps music alive!! The sheer diverdity of composition, performance and perception. There will never be an ultimate version of ET's Adventures, but this new versiion is close to perfection and has a new colour shade and a golden shine to it. By saying this, I am not downgrading the Boston Pops version on Sony which has its independent qualities. And I could still die for the Bostonian Flight to Neverland!

Mahler, my ass. It sounds like a Star Wars fanboy looking for ever more ludicrous rationalizations and in final analysis, that's probably exactly what it is.

An attractive theory, @crumbs! It makes a good deal of sense. I've just been trying to research what the facts are, or at least the things that we believe are facts at this point. There's the partial cue list of the Nov. 11 cut: The later appearance of Palpatine would depend on whether he was introduced in 2M04 The Emperor Lives or perhaps in 1M08 Approaching the Nursery. It's possible 2M04 may have been, say, the reveal that he is alive to the Resistance and that 1M08 was the reveal to the audience. Some tracking noted by yourself: And other tracking noted by @Smaug the iron: I think it would make sense that Williams was not so keen on using the old Emperor's theme for Palpatine, because when there's a central villain who's known to the good guys (in other words, a big baddie that is the source of the conflict), Williams has tended to write a big new theme for them (Vader in TESB, the Emperor in ROTJ). Yes, Palpatine is the same person here, but he's in a new context as the villain who was (apparently) in the shadows and has now been revealed to wreak his havoc on the Resistance. There's also the greater emphasis on the spiritual and supernatural nature of it, which is no doubt what inspired the a cappella version of Anthem of Evil. So it makes sense that Williams wrote Anthem of Evil for Palpatine in this new context. After all, with the exception of TLJ, where the temp track was used in lieu of spotting sessions and was almost certainly the reason for the fewer new themes than one would expect, Williams does seem to like characterizing each new Star Wars score with its new themes even when there are many old ones as well. Now what parts of ROTS were tracked that use the Emperor theme? I couldn't find it among those listed in the spoiler tags above.

Listening to the album now and there is indeed no applause. Sound quality is great! That Devil's Dance track is lit 🔥

Yea, so he might have written the eerie choir opening specifically for the album, intending it to lead into the already recorded music for the Destruction of Kijimi to create the album track

It's so lossy that exterior and interior grooves can't exactly reproduce the same frequencies. You may call the sound "rich" indeed, if you find it "rich" that the sound of each groove bleed on the adjacent ones. Oh yes, it may produce a warmth sound, but at the end, it's distortion.

Same here:

We’ve got violin and cello parts in enough detail to tell 8M4 Psalm of the Sith is not part of the Anthem of Evil track, though it does also use whatever we want to call this theme. The beginning of Psalm of the Sith isn’t anything we’ve identified yet, but the bulk of it appears to be the music heard from about 1:33-3:00 in Join Me (whether it’s tracked or was directly incorporated into the music written for the scene we don’t yet know): I believe the later part of Anthem of Evil is 6M12 Six Twelve, which accompanies the destruction of Kijimi, though mostly tracked over in the final cut. The Final Order fleet rising scene may have originally been part of this sequence: if you move that scene here between the conversation with Palpatine and Pryde and the destruction of Kijimi, the second half of Anthem of Evil fits remarkably well, and the novelization has some evidence that supports that this may have been the original intention as well. I’d put a video up to demonstrate, but they seem to get taken down very fast. Well, it seems it was part of 8M4 Psalm of the Sith (as outlined above), which would have given it at least one prominent use in the final confrontation scenes, which it’s notably lacking.

I don't believe anyone has called it the gold standard. I said I liked it better than Solo, others have merely stated they like it more than the criticism. Liking something and raising it up on a pedestal aren't the same thing. I like popcorn but I wouldn't call it a dinner. This is the danger of hyperbole for effect, you end up putting words in someone else's mouth. As you exaggerate your own comments, you end up exaggerating the comments of others. No big deal, we all do it. I just wanted to clarify that my thoughts on it were what they were, and were not that.

This conversation has become depressingly elitist. Music is for everyone. Humming in a field? Music. Comparisons of music, sure, but no-one is unsuited to it. To say film music has to be at a certain level of education and harmony and construction is myopic in the extreme. Wagner once made these arguments as well, that simplifiying and folking up music, making it 'pop' was going to be the death of music. That paper was rife with Anti-Semitism, but still, his argument: That when composers stop writing complicated music and instead write simple music to please the people, the listeners will get dumber and appreciate only simple music, until only simple music is demanded, and then only simple music is made. A fragile point that doesn't hold up to history. Music is extending in all directions, forwards and backwards, and that is okay.

There was an original take with a quiet leadup. The revised opening is loud percussion. The film presumably uses the revised opening as intended. The OST track "Buckbeak's Flight", also present on the LLL, shifts that revised opening to earlier, revealing some of the original opening buildup after it ends. The OST track "Mischief Managed" as well as the film credits shift the revised opening even earlier, revealing even more of that original opening with harp runs and such. I feel the film version really doesn't work great so I would have been completely fine with just the OST track + the original take included. The twinkly DVD menu transition thing, early Aunt Marge Points the Finger. Or That's A Lie. Not sure which is which and whose earlier version it is. @crumbs, show him that side by side comparison of rips. There are performance differences, it's a different take, though we're not sure at what speed it was recorded, if it was slowed down artificially or not. From the cue list title (Sir Cadogan for Dufay Ensemble and Percussion) I'm completely sure JW wrote, recorded and intended the percussion too, it's not just a sound team mockjob.