point_reyes

Does anybody know if John Williams has left any personal recollections of Orchestrator/Arranger Conrad Salinger? And of course, what they are?

Will the Eiger Sanction ever be released I wonder? Looking for flying theme from Superman (78), too. How can they leave that out! lol

If there is a topic for this already then feel free to move this thread as I cannot locate anything similar other than the announcement on the front page of the website. Apart from the Pittsburgh concert, is there a list of JW's forthcoming conducting engagements, dates/ orchestras? I've trawled through the new season of most of the American orchestras websites and cannot see anything. Usually he appears at the Hollywood Bowl during the summer, but the season of concerts for next summer haven't been published yet. Looking forward to seeing a JW concert at some point. I see he has a concert in Long Beach on 15th January... (on investigation, he isn't conducting that concert ) http://www.longbeachcc.com/calendar/index.cfm?eventid=4464 I can't get to that one

The Gold Retrievers

I'm no expert, but I'm probably talking bollocks here, but Stravinsky is the last name on my mind when I think of Romantic composers. Even Williams can hardly be called a Romantic. One of the greatest strengths in Williams music is how well he amalgamates (and why not, culminates), so many different eras of orchestral music Well, I think The Firebird is possibly Stravinsky's most romantic score, certainly the one most influenced by Rimsky Korsakov in terms of melody and orchestration. As for Stravinsky's influence on Korngold, I'm not so sure. Take Korngold's Schauspiel-Ouvertüre written in 1910 when he was only 13(!) and it is straight out of Strauss and Mahler, two of his idols, but it is also VERY Korngold. That piece does not sound like Strauss or Mahler, but is influenced by them. By the time we come to the first golden age of film scoring in Hollywood, it is Korngold who creates the Hollywood sound in the 1930s and it is, of course this sound along with his main orchestrator - Hugo Friedhofer that carries directly onto the John Williams/Herbert Spencer collaboration like a 50 year musical blood transfusion. Who would have thought that the Korngold/Friedhofer soundworld of 1935 would be so influencial 50 years later in scores such as Star Wars and Superman!

Quint, Interesting comment. I do and I don't; some of Williams's scores are abstract in themselves so I find I can listen to Jaws independently from the film, but sometimes if I do I'll get a feel for the atmosphere of the film locations for instance. A recent trip to Navarre beach in Florida was inspired by Jaws 2, and I took the soundtrack of the movie along with me to play in the hire car! I can't play the wonderful, slow descending string chords that follow the opening music of Psycho without thinking about the city of Phoenix

Perhaps Mahler subconsciously remembered Dvorak's trio when he was composing the 3rd movement of the 9th.

Actually just listening to that Mahler clip above (and that's conductor Bruno Walter in the picture conducting the 1st recording of the 9th Symphony in 1938 with the Vienna Philharmonic - Walter was Mahler's friend, Mahler died in 1911), and how cimematic it sounds!

oh yes.. that's it: Shocking! How could Dvorak steal like this?!!

Filmmusic, I didn't know about Les Baxter's 'Joy', so have just played the excerpt on amazon, and yes, interesting! Interestingly when Les Baxter hired Nelson Riddle to write arrangements for Nat Cole, Baxter didn't credit Riddle for the arrangements (Mona Lisa, for example) as he was the conductor during the early Cole sessions, Baxter allowed himself to be credited with the arrangement. It was only after Cole found out who actually wrote the arrangement that Riddle was rightfully acknowledged.

Not to denigrate JW's wonderful work in any way, has anyone else noticed the similarity of the E.T. flying theme and the slow theme in the middle of the 3rd movement of Mahler's 9th Symphony? There are at least six notes that are identical in the melody or theme. Perhaps it is a coincidence, or perhaps Mahler's 9th Symphony was in the back of JW's mind at some point when he wrote E.T?