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I'm not familiar with Fiddler on the Roof, so I completely missed this, but my dad clued me in that it was "Sunrise, Sunset!" A surprise to hear this in Ginza. (Skip to 0:32 if the embed doesn't do it for you)

Was this score recorded with the Hollywood Studio Symphony or a totally anonymous session ensemble? I'm looking to purchase from Presto Music and I'm not keen on keeping "Disney" as the primary artist.

Point taken — I also apologize for jumping the gun, that's definitely premature of me. Come to think of it, my horrendous self-introduction jokes ("heard this place was all about Bill Ross and the guy who did Scarlet One") might have been mistaken for botspam 🤔

I've just had an extremely cynical thought: hasn't this forum had a spate of sleeper agent bots who don't immediately seed posts with spam? "[JW] is too busy to write any music" is either a bizarrely misaligned observation (e.g. one that comes from a poorly trained bot) or rather a serious typo. I'm happy to retract this and apologize once JC0155 gets their toes wet and proves not to be a bot, but it's getting harder and harder to tell.

I think I get what you mean, but I have the opposite takeaway. Cliff & co are flouting the metronome all throughout (on top of the time changes), and I'm currently very taken with how the time changes here could almost sneak past you if you don't pay attention (or you might mistake them for rubato etc.). Oh, glad to hear I wasn't imagining this one. I've always thought this too, but the hair-raising reharmonization makes a huge impact. (The ginormous mothership taking to the skies over the end titles roll helps, too.)

Fair enough. I am easy prey for clean recordings of lush orchestrations — but of course the OG is fantastic.

Hold up — given that "When You Wish Upon a Star" is rendered here in ABA form, does anybody else hear the A section being played in alternating bars of 4/4 & 5/4? EDIT: Well, I definitely stink at counting, because the original with Cliff Edwards does something pretty similar. I'm a bit ashamed to have missed that for the better part of a decade.

But that rule can be selectively overridden:

I was eagerly awaiting the physical release of this, but seeing as you put it right in front of me, I couldn't stop myself and had a listen anyway. I tuned into Joe's Paris livestream where this version (IIRC — at least it was this instrumentation) was played live and I think the mic placement was a bit off (and possibly the ensemble was a tad under-rehearsed). It is a relief to hear things recorded with care in this presentation, but there are some things that I still find jarring — the thick piano chords that would have resolved Ab7 (F~Gb~Bb~Ab) to Db replaced with solo violin feels unusually thin. In spite of this — wow. I find myself loosening up and enjoying the music. Maybe it's a cheap shot of nostalgia, but it definitely works for me. Derailing the conversation a bit — I quite like "Merry-Go-Round 2019." The "more aggressive" 2-5-1 duplet features more prominently than ever, and while I do think the piano parts worked in the original score, this orchestration is too charming for me to complain about.

I've been looking for a Japan-centric retailer for ages! Thank you for bringing this up. I like both Presto and Qobuz, but there are pros and cons either way. In no particular order: Qobuz can have a wider selection, but sometimes the gates are thrown wide open. If I search up "Joe Hisaishi," Presto pretty much turns up nothing, but Qobuz surfaces every cover artist ("music box," "relaxing piano ver.") under the sun. This is actually where external search engines seem to shine a bit. I actually had to email a Japanese distributor to cross-check if someone was illicitly selling music on their behalf, and it seems they talked to Qobuz, because the album in question disappeared after a bit. I like Presto's overall site design a lot better. I've had the most bizarre authentication issues with Qobuz for ages, to the point where I never leave "Remember Me" checked and opt to re-enter my password every time I want to buy something. Qobuz's "download as a tarball" seems to be permaborked for albums over a certain size. When I purchased Leonard Bernstein's Harvard talks off Qobuz, for example, I spent the better part of an evening on the "download individual tracks" page alternating "tab" and "enter" (luckily, this is just enough to focus each "download track" button in turn). Both distributors are liable to be hit by distributor issues, and customer service is unlkely to fix them for you. Sir Colin Davis' "Berlioz Odyssey" has the same defect on both Qobuz and Presto in that No. 8 of "Benvenuto Cellini" ("Amis, Avant...") goes completely silent at the 20s mark. Seriously, see for yourself on Presto or on Qobuz. Though do note that apparently Qobuz starts their sample seeked at least 20s into the piece, so actually the sample is totally silent

While the show is overall moving in the right direction (for my tastes), I'm still lukewarm on the music. I don't think it'll get Natalie dragged to the Hague, but I'm not terribly keen on it myself. Even the main theme (which has become increasingly easier for me to pick out in recent episodes) doesn't really get me going. That "action" ostinato (short-short long, short-short long) tends to overstay its welcome for me and always feels strangely under-tempo. I yearn for metric variety and notes in upbeat pockets.

I completely mistook the score for The Twins to be synths all the way down, but the composer's Twitter and VGMdb both name the Budapest Symphony Orchestra for these recordings. Did anybody else make my mistake, and is there a term to describe the sonic nature of the recording? (It's a bit like Giacchino's Trek and Rogue scores — "steely?")

This briefly bothered me, but the apologetic line I take is

Well, so By your criteria, E.T. has a magical motif, as do the first three Harry Potter films, and the entirety of the Superman March is magical too

I know this one! This is what young people call asserting dominance, right? I've been meaning to pick this album up for a while, because I wasn't sure if Slatkin had done this one in his concerto cycle.