Omen II

One of my earliest memories is of being taken by my Dad to watch this film when it was first released. At the time sweet shops were selling bubble gum with Superman trading cards (anyone else remember those?) and my Dad used to buy me a pack as a weekly treat. I would give the bubble gum straight to my older siblings and keep the trading cards, for which I had learned all the captions before seeing the film. As you can tell, I have been middle aged since infancy. I remember my Dad telling us to be quiet during the film as my brother and I were calling out the captions from the trading cards at the appropriate point in the film - "Paying a call on Lois Lane!" and "A world torn asunder!", etc. I am sure I had no idea what the word 'asunder' meant, but I have always associated it with Jimmy Olsen taking photographs on a dam, even though it was probably for the destruction of Krypton. My Dad would use the phrase 'paying a call' as a euphemism for going to the toilet, so that caption in particular always amused me. It was nice to attend yesterday with my brother, with whom I had watched the film all those years ago. It was only the second time either of us had seen the film on the big screen. In the box immediately next to us was a little boy who was seeing the film for the first time, with his father who must have been about the same age as me. The little boy was being comforted by his father during the scary parts but would break out into applause when Superman rescued Lois Lane or Air Force One. It was really sweet. There were a few Supermen in the audience, the best of which I managed to snap from afar with his Lois Lane.

Jim has missed a trick by not calling this A Gathering of Fiends.

I have always been rather partial to the (still unreleased ) source cue which plays in the pool hall in Earthquake, heard from about 1:50 in this clip. Check out that Hammond organ. I think it's beautiful! I've said it before and I'll say it again. John Williams must be forced - at the point of a pool cue, if necessary - to compile his 1970s source music cues from the likes of The Eiger Sanction, Earthquake, Cinderella Liberty, The Fury, Superman and others into a lavish double CD groove fest.

I listened to John Ireland’s Epic March, partly to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee weekend but mostly because it’s - how you say in English? - an epic march.

Yes, that was the one - in October 2007. There was also a 60th birthday concert with the LSO at the Barbican in 2013.

I always enjoy seeing a young Patrick Doyle in Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. In case anyone does not know this already, he is the English soldier who starts singing his own setting of non nobis Domine at 3:30 in this clip (he can also be seen at 1:45): I have fond memories of a concert he did with the London Symphony Orchestra to raise money for Leukaemia Research (now Blood Cancer UK) at the Royal Albert Hall a few years ago. My sister was undergoing treatment for leukaemia at the time and it gave us a real boost.

The BBC Philharmonic is the BBC's 'orchestra based in the north of England' and does indeed seem to get many of the recording gigs. They are very good, but in my (completely subjective) opinion the BBC Symphony Orchestra is a slightly better orchestra. Of course that could be my London bias speaking! The BBCSO traditionally performs the first and last nights of the BBC proms season and is generally considered to be one of the big five orchestras in London. I have been lucky enough to see and hear all of the BBC orchestra many times at the Proms over the years and I would probably rank them as follows: BBC Symphony Orchestra BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra BBC Philharmonic BBC National Orchestra of Wales BBC Concert Orchestra If I did that again tomorrow I would probably put them in a different order.

I have always understood the RPCO to be the Royal Philharmonic's 'B Team' orchestra, under the same umbrella as the RPO but generally focusing on more populist fare. That is not to say that the RPCO is not as good as the RPO by any means, but I guess this arrangement gives the RPO the flexibility to earn revenue from lucrative gigs such as the live in concert films without interrupting the main RPO concert season. You will often see that the RPO and the RPCO have concerts on the same day and at the same time in different venues. https://www.rpo.co.uk/about/rpco I suppose it's a bit like the BBC Symphony Orchestra doing the more 'serious' concerts while the BBC Concert Orchestra is the jack-of-all-trades ensemble, which is no comment on the ability of the musicians in the respective ensembles.

Yes, I ordered it with SpaceCamp and it was delivered on Wednesday. I do not have any of the previous iterations so I cannot give any useful comparisons in regard to the sound, but the recording is very nice and punchy to my layman’s ears.

Wonderful news, disciples! A little matter of fourteen of your Earth years after I visited John Williams Close in New Cross Gate, today I was able to visit John Williams Close in Kingston-upon-Thames while walking the London Loop, a 150 mile long-distance walk around London. Kingston-upon-Thames is a much more well-to-do area than New Cross Gate, so this John Williams Close is a gated private road a mere stone's throw from the River Thames. It is not far from Hampton Court Palace, where Henry VIII got up to all sorts of mischief, the fat fuck. My odyssey is not quite over, because since my original post a John Williams Boulevard - named after a former leader of the council in that neck of the woods - has been constructed in Darlington in the northeast of this sceptred isle. I have been to Darlington a couple of times but not since 2008. My promise to you: I WILL try.

Camulodunum! Did you misbehave when you were in the army?

There is a 25% off sale on Chandos's film music titles during the very merry month of May. The three disc compilation of Ralph Vaughan Williams film music is an absolute steal at £3.75 if you do not already have it. What better way to celebrate his 150th birthday than adding it to your collection? Chandos 25% off sale BUY BUY BUY! GOTTA COLLECT 'EM ALL!

……to see you……NICE!

I went to see the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a very rare performance of Rued Langgaard's first symphony at the Barbican on Friday. It is a remarkable piece (finished by the Danish composer in 1911 when he was still only seventeen years old) and quite bonkers at times. There were nine horns (four of which doubled on Wagner tubas) as well as off-stage trumpets and trombones in addition to the healthy numbers already on stage. I was glad to have been in row S; any further forward and my ears might have started bleeding as if listening to the boîte diabolique in Look Around You.

I think it says jazz-bos. A 'jazzbo' is a term for a musician or a fan of jazz. I think they have just hyphenated the word in the article.

I feel I really should know the answer to this, as I did a course on Neronian literature and society as part of my degree! Marian is likely to to be right on Quo Vadis, which was one of the films I had to watch. I also remember having to watch Federico Fellini's Satyricon, which was a couple of hours of my life I will never get back.

The Philharmonia Orchestra performed this at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Thursday. Although I had seen this a few years ago at the Royal Albert Hall, I decided to get tickets and I was so glad I did! The orchestra was on tremendous form and hearing the final sequence from the escape onwards was like listening to the original soundtrack - every sync point was hit just perfectly. They are a really great orchestra when it comes to film music. Although I have been to many live to film presentations before, I think this was the first time I had seen conductor Anthony Gabriele. He got everything spot on and I am pleased to see that he will be conducting the performance of Superman in London this summer. This was one of those concerts where you could just tell that everyone in the audience loved it, not only from their spontaneous applause at certain key moments and their reactions at the end but also from the buzz of excitement and chit chat as people made their way home afterwards. The programme was free and has a nice note from John Williams inside (no doubt they copy and paste and change the name of the orchestra, but still nice to see). You can read the programme here if you are interested. P.S. I was amused by the similarity - from a distance at least - between the conductor and one of the first violinists. They could have been twins!

I went to this concert yesterday and it was really nice! Film composer Carl Davis was the conductor and is clearly a keen John Williams fan like we are. Before the concert there was a free discussion between him and Philharmonia horn player Kira Doherty, which was good fun. I wanted to ask him during the pre-concert talk whether he had ever listened to Thomas and the King and considered trying to programme any of it in such an appropriate venue, but unfortunately the talk overran so they could only take a couple of audience questions. For anyone who does not know much about British history, the musical is about the relationship between the mediaeval Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas a Becket and King Henry II. Becket was murdered by four knights in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 after falling out with the monarch and was later canonised. As I had the day off work, I made the most of it by visiting the wonderful cathedral which has some magnificent stained glass windows amongst many other treasures (it is a world heritage site). While there was nothing in the programme I had not heard live before, there were a couple of pieces heard less often these days which I enjoyed the most, namely Born on the Fourth of July and the Love Theme from Superman. Carl Davis mentioned that these were among his favourites too. He had a couple of senior moments, for example reminiscing that he met John Williams when he was working on The Cardinal - I assume he meant Monsignor - but otherwise he was on very good form for an 85 year old. He has the amusing habit of sometimes counting in the orchestra as if he were conducting a jazz band ("A 1, 2, 3, 4...!"), which is just about more endearing than it is disconcerting. He also took the Olympic Fanfare and Theme so frighteningly fast that I thought the horn section was going to start crying! This was my first visit inside the Marlowe Theatre. It is a comfortable, modern all-purpose venue but presumably not built specifically for orchestral music, so the acoustics were ok but not great. It was difficult to hear the horn section in particular, as they were effectively projecting their sound into a black curtain at the back of the stage. The excellent Philharmonia Orchestra has a lot of brilliant young musicians, many of whom were on the last train back to London after the concert. It was fun to hear a couple of them singing the Superman theme out loud and proclaiming it to be "so good" as they walked along the platform at St. Pancras station before descending into the Underground, as football supporters do when returning from having seen their team win away from home.

Here are a few blurry photos of the occasion (these inconsiderate people just won't make like statues and pose for me!). The first is of percussionist Colin Currie at the vibraphone, getting everything set up during the interval. In the third photo you can see soprano Grace Davidson in the centre of the choir with the boy soloist who also sang beautifully.

I went to this concert too. It was great, wasn't it? It is worth mentioning that Danny Elfman was in attendance too and came onto the stage at the end of the concerto and again at the end of the concert.

Tom Service regurgitates his obvious dislike for John Williams at any opportunity. He used his programme notes for the BBC Proms concert in 2017 (the one where Keith Lockhart conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra) to list classical works which Williams supposedly ripped off. In all other Proms programmes the same page is used to promote ‘further listening’ of music by the same composers featured in the concert.

The Eiger Sanction. 🫠

I would have had you down as more of an Amundsen man than a Scott man, @Thor! 🇳🇴🇬🇧

I went to the live to picture presentation of this at the Barbican yesterday evening. It was something of a dream come true to hear this, one of my favourite film scores, performed live to the film - something I never thought would happen with a British film of this vintage. Before the film started, the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins played a kind of overture / suite of music from the film which included some sections of music not heard in the film, which was a great way to kick things off. The soprano soloist was none other than Elizabeth Watts, one of the finest singers in the country, whose voice was just about perfect for this. She was well supported by the ladies of the BBC Symphony Chorus, 32 choral singers in total. I realised how closely the women's voices matched the howling Antarctic wind in several scenes, such that it was sometimes difficult to discern what was the choir and what was the wind. Wonderful! I had seen the film before but it was quite a long time ago. It's actually a really good film - there were many poignant moments during which you could feel the tension in the hall, for example the scene where Scott's expedition party has to shoot the ponies one by one. It happens off screen while the camera focuses on each of the next horses in turn as their muzzles are cradled one last time by their human companions. I also noticed almost all the orchestra members who could see the screen watching transfixed as Scott (John Mills) delivers his final few words in the tent, knowing that he and his companions would not make it. Vaughan Williams's magnificent score was played perfectly and it did not matter that it occasionally drowned out the dialogue on screen. If you are interested, you can read the programme notes here.