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Omen II

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Posts posted by Omen II

  1. I love how the Throne Room music is listed as the Royal Presentation in the programme notes for the LSO in Space concert from 1978.  I will henceforth be using that title in preference to the more locative Throne Room.

     

    Although it was not that long ago (43 years), it is still surprising to see just how few women there were in the LSO in those days - just the clarinet and the two harpists.  Most of the major orchestras in the UK have a pretty even male / female split today by accident or design, indeed it is not uncommon to see orchestras comprised of more women than men nowadays.  Also, with a few exceptions, the names of the players are overwhelmingly British in 1978, while the LSO is much more multinational in 2021.  Just an observation on how times have changed in a relatively short period.

     

    Useless factoid alert: the son of the fourth bassoon player was in my year at school.

  2. 2 hours ago, Tom Guernsey said:

    Thanks for posting. How odd. Neither the 1996 or 1998 concert programme feature Summon the Heroes. Unless I’m going blind?! I’m 90% certain that it was at the concert in 1996 (which I’m also fairly certain was the one broadcast on radio 3) as it was the Olympics that year. Wish I could find the tape of that broadcast... 

     

    Interesting how the publicity blurb kinda has to sell his music somewhat to the classical crowd. Whereas now you’d have to fight to get a ticket! I certainly don’t recall having any trouble getting decent (and not hugely expensive) tickets. And for the first one I was at school the second at uni. 


    Summon the Heroes definitely replaced the Olympic Fanfare in the 1996 concerts.  The listing on the flyer posted by Miguel had changed slightly by the time of the actual concerts, as is wont to happen with these things.

     

    I still have the programme from the concert and have taken a quick photo.  I remember that one of the encores was the Raiders March and I know they also played The Sugarland Express with the flute substituting for a harmonica, but I cannot remember if that was in the 96 or one of the 98 concerts.

     

     

    60BC338B-3B72-466F-9DEC-44EA973CBA71.jpeg

  3. I was at the concerts in 1996 and 1998 but unfortunately I do not have any photos, much as I wish I did.  The 1985 concert was a little before my time, but I have seen some photos of the concert on a thread on Film Score Monthly a couple of years back.

     

    Filmharmonic 85 - photos not mine

     

    4 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

    When was the date of the 1985 concert?

     

    16th November 1985.

     

    image.png

     

    4 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

    If anyone has a programme from his June (or was it July?) concert in 1982, that would also be great.

     

    There were two LSO concerts conducted by John Williams in the open air sculpture court at the Barbican on 8th and 9th August 1982.  You could try emailing the archivist at the LSO (Libby Rice) who might be willing to email you a scan of the programme(s) if you ask nicely!

  4. 3 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

    Don't trust a ranking that ranks Einaudi above Verdi, Saint-Saens, Ravel and Wagner.

     

    And why is there no Prokofiev?

     

     

    The annual Classic FM poll is based on the radio station's listeners nominating their three favourite pieces of classical (in the broadest sense of the term) music.  Classic FM tends to play the more accessible pieces from the classical repertoire without too much variety - you are unlikely to hear any Stockhausen or Boulez, for example - therefore to some degree the poll will always reflect the pieces they play most.  Prokofiev is played on Classic FM, but it tends to be either Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliet or the troika from Lieutenant Kije and not much else.

     

    @Fabulin's list shows the composers with most entries in the top 300 and the positions of those entries.

     

    1 hour ago, bruce marshall said:

    Einudi?

    Binge?

    Who?

    Diversity picks?

     

     

    If Classic FM was a BBC station you might have a point about diversity, but Ronald Binge's music is about as white and English as you can get.  His light music is especially well loved by British listeners of a certain age, especially Sailing By, Elizabethan Serenade and The Watermill.  Listeners will not vote for something they don't like, so it is a fairly democratic poll at least.  As for Einaudi, while the attraction of his music is largely lost on me, the fact is that Classic FM plays it an awful lot so he is bound to feature prominently in any poll of listeners to the station.

  5. I am hoping that this electrifying performance of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Tomorrow from The Constant Nymph will show up in good quality on YouTube eventually.  Until then, this post by mezzo soprano Kate Lindsey on the Book of Face will have to suffice (video quality is not as good and there is a slight lag between picture and sound, but better than a kick in the teeth).

     

    Tomorrow

     

    For me this was the highlight of the 2019 BBC Proms season.

     

  6. 1 hour ago, Bespin said:

    Any thoughts about this album?

     

     

    It's an excellent CD.  I suspect I am not the only one here who attended the concert at which it was recorded.  Richard Kaufman's daughter Whitney sang a couple of the songs (the one from Wild Is the Wind, for example) and Tiomkin's widow Olivia was in the audience not far from where I was sitting.  The other vocalist Andy Playfoot can often be seen with the Maida Vale Singers accompanying the John Wilson Orchestra - here he is opening the singing in There Is Nothin' Like A Dame from South Pacific:

     

     

    I remember also spotting the American conductor Andrew Litton in the audience at the concert.

  7. On 3/3/2021 at 2:20 PM, Yavar Moradi said:

    Alfred Newman is my favorite Golden Age composer, but All About Eve is a score I’ve just never clicked with.

     

    Yavar


    Fun fact #1: I won my CD of James Horner’s Titanic from Classic FM by correctly identifying the main title music from All About Eve.  It was in the late 90s so I had to send my answer in on a postcard.  I remain convinced to this day that I was the only person listening to the programme (which was very late on a Sunday night) who a) knew the answer and b) bothered to write in.  I remember my Mum being quite excited when she happened to hear my name read out on the wireless.

     

    Fun fact #2: The Titanic CD was scratched and unplayable, so I had to contact Classic FM and ask for a replacement!

     

    😆

  8. 2 hours ago, Jay said:

    I've never seen The Eiger Sanction.  Should I watch it?


    Yes.  It’s an entertaining film (if a tad too long) and the mountain climbing scenes are genuinely gripping.  Some of the dialogue you could not get away with nowadays, but if anything that makes it more fun.  Great cinematography and score to boot.

  9. 23 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

    Forgive me for asking, guys, but...where is the synthesizer, in THE EIGER SANCTION?

     

    The most notable example is the strident synthesiser heard accompanying the death plunge of enemy agent Kruger from an apartment window in the film version of Up The Drainpipe.  You will not hear this on the album, however.  For the album rerecording, Williams replaced the synthesiser note with an equally strident two-note trumpet stinger, heard at about [2:46] in the album track.

     

    Hopefully a future expansion will allow listeners to compare the original film and rerecorded album versions.

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