Incanus

Oh absolutely but for me it is sort of a given with Williams. As I mentioned in my review, the score sports a lot of surprisingly intimate solo moments and touches of great orchestration but they alone do not elevate this score to a classic. Certainly Williams' style here seems at times quite economic, less is more approach, but the orchestrations do make the music shine.

@Bespin CopilotThere are certainly individual 5 star moments but on the whole the album is about 3,5 to 4 stars/5 stars. As has been reported the score works very well in the film, which of course is its main function. The restrained approach both Williams and Spielberg set for the score clearly dictated its form and how much it could or wanted to be able to project in the film. If this had been a Close Encounters or E.T. style film, I am sure the music would have been more unbridled.

Oh hi I didn't see your joke up there.

I said, you need a more experienced composer for this Steven, maybe Bach Mozart Haydn Beethoven Steven said, very sweetly, I know John, but they are all dead. So I had no choice but to score this movie.

BloodBoal, you haven't aged a day!

I wonder what will they think of next to "adapt". A single page from a part of LotR they left out of the movies? I have zero interest in any Tolkien adaptations after the Hobbit, which itself was a enormous mixed bag that suffered from the Lucas style Prequelitis (more CGI and "bigger is better" mentality). But this endless milking of Tolkien's works with such creatively bankrupt projects is simply awful.

As JW has sometimes described it, composing these themes is a bit like sculpting to slowly find the form of the final theme just like a sculptor finds the final form in the stone. If I remember correctly Williams noted that he wrote several of these cantilena-like themes for the movie so I am sure there are some other ideas that were left out of the final film.

This is a way too fast reading of the piece for my liking. I am all for bringing out new colours or highlighting some sections of the orchestra in a new recording but in this particular case the speed just makes it feel like someone had artificially sped it up. Or the orchestra was indeed running from the dinosaurs while recording this. Looking forward to this album though. The previous Williams compilation was quite good for the most part.

Thank you for these! Always fascinating and lovely to hear these alternate approaches. I love the score and it is interesting to see Williams actually tried so many different approaches for the movie's ending but I agree that they made the right decision to go with the Warhorse theme in the end.

The original recording of Conan the Destroyer really hampers the music, which otherwise is quite a decent sequel score. The recording is so dry and feels so small. I own that Intrada release but in this case vastly prefer the Prometheus/Tadlow re-recording. I think the film music buff in me wanted to have the original recording for historic reasons. As for the Jaws 50th Anniversary Special Edition, it is quite magnificent. Mike Matessino really poured all his love into this new release (as he tells in the excellent liner notes as well) and it shows. Had a thorough listen through of the set yesterday and will be returning to it tonight again.

I think I have widened my tastes in film scores but I remain a fan of orchestral music at heart. Film music is still number 1 but I am exploring more new classical/orchestral music I have not heard before these days. Currently I have a listening marathon of Vaughan Williams (also his few film scores) and Prokofiev on my playlist alongside some of these film scores I mentioned here. Oooh I forgot to add these to my list of recent acquisitions in the above post (still waiting for these to arrive though):

From Wilderland to Western shore, from northern waste to southern hill, through dragon-lair and hidden door and darkling woods I walked at will. Hi Stefan @#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal!

I am doing well @Jay, thanks for asking, lurking here from time to time these days. Enjoying some good music, new and old.

Mark Graham episode was another great one. Hopefully he'll come back some day to do another episode. I am sure he has tons of stories left to tell even after this lengthy talk. I really love how Maurizio always opens the discussion with the guest telling about their beginnings and career. Those always include some wonderful stories and show how varied career paths these people have had.🙂