SteveMc

I love Tauriel's Theme

Hard to ever beat Powell these days.

This is fantastic. Has he done any concert work?

TLJ and The Post were the best. I greatly respect Phantom Thread, though.

The Berlin JW performance vs. Vienna JW performance poll thread will be epic.

For some reason, I don't find myself revisiting TROS too much.

I am glad I'm not that much of a completist.

I want to believe....

We're Looking Good (1987) Rollicking and upbeat occasional overture with a good deal of 1941 in it written for the Special Olympics. There's a version with lyrics too that appears lost to time. Here's John conducting it.

I'm not sure it is supposed to be pleasant at all, no. Those kind of notes mark virtuosity and emotional complexity. Gives the music bite, and the some folks enjoy that bite more than others.

Celebration Fanfare (1986) Two compositions today. First, a celebratory piece commissioned by the Houston Symphony to mark the sesquicentennial of my adopted home state of Texas. As noted in the link below, it was part of a larger project of commissions from a slate of major composers to mark the event, and was performed first by the Houston Symphony and then by Williams with the Boston Pops, during which time it was recorded for broadcast. https://www.johnwilliams.org/compositions/concert/celebration-fanfare AFAIK, that broadcast has not surfaced. Neither has any audio I kno

I think it is the perfect non-occasional concert work to drop into a mostly film score concert.

Part of it might be that, when I first got into JW in 2014, it was his newest score. So, my appreciation might be tinged with that subjective background. But, objectively, I think that is is a wonderful chamber score, each cue having this quiet emotion and sadness. They feel like little musical jewels. For a composer known for bombast and broad strokes, it vividly shows how subtle his voice really is. It also is a fantastic example of JWs leitmotif approach. The harmonic language also impresses me. I listened to a lot of classical in my teens, so a lot of my takes

Liberty Fanfare (1986) Composed for the grand centennial celebration of the Statue of Liberty and its concurrent restoration, the Liberty Fanfare is a concert overture somewhat in the Olympic Fanfare mold. Stirring, patriotic, hummable, a grand distillation of 80s optimism. It serves its purpose well and has become something of a modern Americana classic. I enjoy it well enough. Here is Williams conducting the piece during the event for which it was commissioned. And here are two Boston Pops recordings, one with JW on the podium, the other with K

I do think the scores I listed are masterful. War Horse too for that matter. I don't think a masterpiece has to be shocking or out of the ordinary or breaking new ground. Beethoven's late quartets are masterpieces for that reason. Bach's Mass in B Minor is not. But it is still a masterpiece, a culmination, Bach showing off his powers in a titanic way, powers he showed off plenty of times before. I do understand, however, the urge to use the word masterpiece to denote something truly spectacular. The passage of time and the collected opinion of others is often needed to di