pete

Has no one pointed out yet that the Vienna Phil. accidentally tagged jwfan.com‘s instagram account in their announcement of the CD/DVD recording? 😂 
 

This weekend was quite an experience! Hard to put into words. On Saturday I had a stalls seat, which was great to watch Williams work his magic (I loved how he often didn't do that much and let the musicians play, but added little gestures here and there to shape a phrase or an accent) and see the energy with which the musicians played. On Sunday I was in the standing area, which meant I couldn't see much, but this had the upside of being much more able to just lean back and take in the sound of the music (which was great even way back there under the balcony) without getting fixated on all the little details catching my eye the day before (watching how certain things are played, how the players react to the conducting, etc - which is its own kind of fun, but woods and trees and all...).
And the sound really was magnificent! The pieces that moved me most were Hook (the magic of the beginning of the concert, and realizing this was actually happening), Close Encounters (just this sublime journey from chaos to triumphant harmony), Sabrina (how so many people can produce so intimate a sound, especially in the melancholic middle section), and War Horse (that aforementioned brass chorale!). And I was really happy they included the Duel from Tintin, which is just great fun with all it's twists and turns, especially with Mutter coordinating the wild bouncing bows passages with the violin section!
I greatly enjoyed meeting a lot of fellow film music friends after the concerts, even if only briefly, and sharing this moment of history (which it surely is)

Yes, and he gave us both pronunciations of "Tintin": the international "Tintin"... and the correct one 
 
 
And if I understood correctly he said that George Lucas told him that Luke and Leia were siblings before the second film... We need to warn the Star Wars theorists in the GD threads who keep arguing that Lucas never had a long term plan while filming the original trilogy ! 

Mixed emotions for me. Living in Korea and having had already crossed off "seeing Williams live" from my bucket list back in 1998 in London, it never occurred to me to attend. The idea only really came to me a few days ago when I saw tickets were available. But it was too late, and well, I had some 7 months ago purchased tickets to see Queen on their Bohemian Rhapsody tour in Seoul last night - Jan. 18. If given the choice, I would have preferred to have been in Vienna, but I have to admit I'm still on a high from seeing Queen perform. Sure Freddie wasn't there, but Brian May was and it felt like the real thing. The rock part of me is over the moon, but the Williams fan in me is thinking I missed my last chance to see Williams. Yeah, mixed emotions. But by golly the Queen show was amazing!
 
And I'm so happy for those that got to experience this. Back in 1998, I took every opportunity - 4 nights and one open rehearsal. it hardly seems real now, but I'm so glad others here just experienced something similiar.

Mixed emotions for me. Living in Korea and having had already crossed off "seeing Williams live" from my bucket list back in 1998 in London, it never occurred to me to attend. The idea only really came to me a few days ago when I saw tickets were available. But it was too late, and well, I had some 7 months ago purchased tickets to see Queen on their Bohemian Rhapsody tour in Seoul last night - Jan. 18. If given the choice, I would have preferred to have been in Vienna, but I have to admit I'm still on a high from seeing Queen perform. Sure Freddie wasn't there, but Brian May was and it felt like the real thing. The rock part of me is over the moon, but the Williams fan in me is thinking I missed my last chance to see Williams. Yeah, mixed emotions. But by golly the Queen show was amazing!
 
And I'm so happy for those that got to experience this. Back in 1998, I took every opportunity - 4 nights and one open rehearsal. it hardly seems real now, but I'm so glad others here just experienced something similiar.

And the ironic thing is that you could really see that the VPO musicians were truly enjoying themselves, and looked honoured to be performing JW's music under his direction (the principal flute bowing and gesturing towards JW as if passing all the praise back to the maestro after the solo from Dartmoor, is a notable example which comes to mind). If the orchestra, musicians and the Gesellschaft have accepted him, why do the critics keep up this pretentious approach?
 
edit: correction JFK -> Dartmoor

He was bursting with glee when during the first part of the concert. Not quite so much in the end, but I think he was just tired by then. No surprise after a massive concert with 5 encores.
 
 
I thought the arrangements worked wonderfully and were some of the highlights of the concert. But a diva? Mutter was perfectly humble and absolutely refused Williams's continuous prompts for her to step forward to claim her applause, to the point where I think he even got slightly annoyed with her. But she absolutely made a point of never stepping closer to the audience than Williams was so the applause would be his.
 
 
And bear in mind that they're playing Vienna Horns. They're much harder to play, and one or two flubs in prominent horn parts are quite normal. The small JP flub wasn't a big issue. And their sound! The brass chorale in War Horse was one of the concert's highlights for me. Made me wish he'd play something from Lincoln.
Stupid automatic mode on my DSLR mostly focused on the heads right in front of me. I don't usually use it, and now I know why...
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have something for you guys to warm up to before the upcoming concerts, directly from the Musikverein 
Some pics from the rehearsals with the maestro himself (at his best!!) and Anne-Sophie Mutter.. It sounds really amazing and very much looking  forward to the Encores 😁😉
 

It hasn't been.  @Lockdown missed his chance to start the thread!

Not sure if this has been posted yet:
https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/2020/01/15/John-Wiliams-composer-will-conduct-Pittsburgh-Symphony-Orchestra-June-tickets/stories/202001150166

Not sure if this has been posted yet:
https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/2020/01/15/John-Wiliams-composer-will-conduct-Pittsburgh-Symphony-Orchestra-June-tickets/stories/202001150166

Not sure if this has been posted yet:
https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/2020/01/15/John-Wiliams-composer-will-conduct-Pittsburgh-Symphony-Orchestra-June-tickets/stories/202001150166

Ready to board the plane! Here I come Vienna and John! #excited😅

Am I the only person who read the thread title and thought Williams had signed on to write more Potter music?

Am I the only person who read the thread title and thought Williams had signed on to write more Potter music?

Am I the only person who read the thread title and thought Williams had signed on to write more Potter music?

A Vienna schnitzel with fries

Definitely reading too much into things. 

It's only about 5 minutes. Nice theme - beautiful and touching and restrained, but you can't really compare it to the film scores that are an hour or two or three at least in terms of hours of effort that went into their creation.
 
Here it is.. just missing a short minute long end credits:
 
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6gkjqd
 
Well, he certainly produced a lot of music. Those scores, an oboe concerto, about 12 other pieces such as Markings and Fanfare for Frenway and Conversations etc. Plus Han Solo and Galaxy's Edge, the recent violin album, the third Spielberg/Williams collaboration, and a whole bunch of concerts. - Am I missing anything? A few less film scores and concerti than the previous decade, but that's still quite an addition to his body of work. I don't think we could have hoped for more at the beginning of the decade. And he also spent a bit of time listening to and approving a lot of expanded releases. And he probably wrote a few things we may never hear of. A few health issues too. 
 
Favorites of the film scores. I'm enjoying more The Last Jedi after revisiting it recently, but I love the smaller scores as well. Hard to rank, but I would put Tintin and The Post in the bottom two places, much as a I love elements of those scores. And I'd leave off the basketball one due to its brevity. 

End of “Dice and Roll” is pretty likely. The War Horse-esque cue with Han and Chewie saying goodbye to Enfys Nest at the end has been speculated. 
 
“Reminiscence Therapy” obviously has that pull from Adventures of Han, so this extra transitional bit may be JW. Remarkably seamless if it’s Powell.
 
 

I meant the other “west”, sometimes referred to as “east”.

It's only about 5 minutes. Nice theme - beautiful and touching and restrained, but you can't really compare it to the film scores that are an hour or two or three at least in terms of hours of effort that went into their creation.
 
Here it is.. just missing a short minute long end credits:
 
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6gkjqd
 
Well, he certainly produced a lot of music. Those scores, an oboe concerto, about 12 other pieces such as Markings and Fanfare for Frenway and Conversations etc. Plus Han Solo and Galaxy's Edge, the recent violin album, the third Spielberg/Williams collaboration, and a whole bunch of concerts. - Am I missing anything? A few less film scores and concerti than the previous decade, but that's still quite an addition to his body of work. I don't think we could have hoped for more at the beginning of the decade. And he also spent a bit of time listening to and approving a lot of expanded releases. And he probably wrote a few things we may never hear of. A few health issues too. 
 
Favorites of the film scores. I'm enjoying more The Last Jedi after revisiting it recently, but I love the smaller scores as well. Hard to rank, but I would put Tintin and The Post in the bottom two places, much as a I love elements of those scores. And I'd leave off the basketball one due to its brevity. 

If he's flying in from the west coast, he's either flying across the US *or* flying westward. He could also opt for a non-direct flight with e.g. a full day layover, perhaps in Ireland. Depends on the airline of course. And he should be quite used at least to the 3 hour time difference between the east and west costs. Compared to Boston/Tanglewood/New York the time difference to central Europe is "just" 6 hours.
 
 
I've been thinking about that myself. I've decided against actually organising & reserving something myself, because the concerts are right at the end of my holiday, and I don't want to stress out about managing 20-30+ people and making sure they all sign up in advance and show up for a reservation and thus get stressed out both during my holiday and around the concerts (I'm nervous about them anyway - three times now I've had a dream that the concert was about to start and I was still at home looking for my tickets).
 
There are places in the area of the Musikverein, of course. The question is how easy it will be to find something that can accomodate a rather large group on the spot. One candidate might be Gmoakeller, which is about a 10 minute walk from the Musikverein. Some may remember it from our meetup before the James Horner concert, when we had a reservation for the large room in the cellar. Problem is that they're right behind the Konzerthaus (the other large concert hall in Vienna) and are I believe usually pretty much booked up by concert goers in the evenings. The Williams concert on Saturday (and obviously on Sunday) is comparatively early, but if that'll help us find seats there I can't tell.
 
Obviously, feel free to call them and see if you can book the cellar or something, but I imagine they'd want to know at least a rough number of people that will definitely show up, and then you'll have to start organising.
 
 

Done

Oh, sorry, here's what I meant to say: