Jump to content

What Is The Last Score You Listened To? (older scores)


Ollie

Recommended Posts

Two quintessential Williams compilations full of his best themes from the films of Steven Spielberg. These two CDs were in large part responsible for introducing me to John Williams's work and contain fine performances and new wonderful arrangements by Williams of his own material. Highly recommended to any Williams fan and a fan of film music in general.

Great stuff on these, especially the first one. The Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra recording is essential.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Two quintessential Williams compilations full of his best themes from the films of Steven Spielberg. These two CDs were in large part responsible for introducing me to John Williams's work and contain fine performances and new wonderful arrangements by Williams of his own material. Highly recommended to any Williams fan and a fan of film music in general.

Great stuff on these, especially the first one. The Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra recording is essential.

Yes in all fairness some of the material on Williams on Williams album is a bit less well or tightly performed than on the Spielberg/Williams Collaboration. I think material like E.T. and Schindler's List plus the CEO3K and the Basket Chase is not handled with as much panache and emotional impact and precision as at least I expected. The Hook suite is inarguably a highlight of the album for me.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I haven't listened to Spielberg/Williams or Williams on Williams in a while. From what I recall of them, my favorite tracks were the theme from Always, Motorcycle Scherzo, My Friend, The Brachiosaurus and Smee's Plan. Honestly, I prefer original or alternate versions to the rest of the pieces. In summation, those albums are totally listenable, but they are not that great for me. They're more like introductory CDs for a new or casual Williams fan (although By Request is sort of the Queen Greatest Hits of JW concert music).

Like a lot of people, I listen to Boston Pops Flight to Neverland and would rather just listen to Hook's original score. Then I wonder what the hell happened to the brass in those recordings.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Count of Monte Cristo by Edward Shearmur

There are many merits that Shearmur’s work has going for it. The majestic main theme (often taken up by a solo horn) has great appeal with attractive harmonies. This lush theme makes a breathtaking listen, quite suitable for the landscapes of the film. Shearmur also offers some great dark moody writing in “Escape from the Island” and “Intrdouction”. The love theme is nice, if a bit sparse and simple (to a fault perhaps). Along with that, we have some entertaining action material in cues like “Betrayed” and “Escape from the Island”. Last but not least, some of my favourite moments of this score are the little bits of playful attitude. “Training Montage” and “An Invitation to the Ball” are delightful cues, and to its merit, the former cue would be taken by Zimmer and company to be regurgitated into the POTC scores.

Having said all that, its hard to shake the sensation of being underwhelmed upon the completion of the album. Shearmur has all the right ingredients here. A wonderful bold theme, well-crafted period elements and some enthusiastic writing are all present, but there is a lack of genuine scope in the score. This may be largely due to the atmospheric portions of the score or perhaps the slightly disjointed album presentation. With the help of the aforementioned main theme, the score certainly flirts with the ambitions it attempts to achieve in portions of “Introduction”, “Marseille”, “Involving Albert” or "End Titles" but these bursts are often short-lived. Consequently, the score never truly grasps the sense of gravity that could have really benefitted this work. A score with a lot of potential. That’s ultimately what this ends up being. I just wish it could have been a bit more. Be that as it may, it certainly is an enjoyable 4 star effort. * * * *

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fury_VCL07021011_2.jpg

A score I should listen to again ASAP. It has been far too long since the last one. Such a beautifully visceral experience with a knock out main theme. Williams rarely gets this primally powerful with his music. There is an almost unstoppable sense of doom in the music, grim inevitability that is best summed up by the main title. The actual score is decently performed and offers a few more variations on the main theme but the LSO re-recording album on the Varese set is just superb with top notch sound quality and awesome performance of all the highlights of the score and contains a hauntingly touching string elegy coda in Epilogue.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Fury is a great score. It has the dark raw power that is rarely heard in Williams career. I just love the Herrmann-esque vibe that the score has going for it. Love it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm listening to the Prague re-recording of Horner's End Credit suite from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. They did a great job re-capturing the frenetic strings and alternating tempos well, the orchestra sounds suitably big and it sounds even crisper than the remastered original. And Silva's "Space: Above & Beyond" suite... that's another suite the Prague musicians nailed perfectly too. (Mrs. Walker would've been proud of that one.)

And it seems like a lot of us are revisiting Hook. I have three tracks from the original CD downloaded: "Prologue", "The Arrival of Tink/Flight to Neverland" and "The Ultimate War". I have to say I'm really warming up to the score, especially the latter. Maybe it's not so overrated after all...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by John Williams: A brilliantly colorful and excitingly magical score exploring more exclectic and Medieval sounds than its predecessors. Williams was challenged by the director and I feel all for the better as there is a certain vibrancy and energy in the music that is all its own. The thematic ideas are all excellent and there is a whole plethora of them. The only old ideas returning are Hedwig's Theme used rather sparingly here but each appearance magical and the Flying Theme (Nimbus 2000) making a brief cameo at the end of the film. The new central theme Double Trouble, as the director Cuarón puts it, is a close cousin to Hedwig's Theme and imparts certain faux Medieval flavour and sense of off-kilter fun to the whole score, Williams interpolating it to many sequences with great care. The Window to the Past, the new Harry Potter Family Theme is as gorgeous as only a melancholic pastoral theme penned by Williams can be and the Maestro writes yet another inspired Flying Theme for this film for the hippogrif, a luminous and beautiful wordless choral melody for the Patronus spell and several other highly memorable and apt themes for characters and situations.

The album itself gives a decent sampling of this multicoloured feast but it leaves out several smaller themes and focuses on Double Trouble through most of its running time. It is still a highly enjoyable listening experience except for the End Credits Suite, which after a terrific 3 minute opening of original material repeats nearly 8 minutes worth of material from the album notatim literally pasting together music from A Window to the Past, Buckbeak's Flight, The Snowball Fight, Double Trouble, abreviated The Knight Buss and Aunt Marge's Waltz. This leaves you with a rather mixed and puzzled feel as a well rounded original suite would have been certainly preferable to editing job like this. Whether this reflects the hectic world of modern film scoring where Williams didn't have time to write anything new or an attempt to replicate the film credits is unknown but it doesn't finish things off the most satisfying way.

Still the score is in my opinion on a par with the original Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in colorful magic it conjures! Bring on complete scores for HP I say so that we can experience the riches of this wonderful score in full!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually I think it is better that the Hedwig's Theme is used judiciously so as not to dampen its effect. The first score repeats it perhaps too much, which can wear the listener out. I remember several members saying something to that effect here on the MB. In POA Williams inserts it cleverly at suprising moments like in Secrets of the Castle and the time transition scene for example, giving a reminder of the HP signature tune but not underlining it too much. I am sure that if he had been left to his own devices Williams would have used it and other old themes a bit more, but I guess Cuarón preferred Double Trouble over it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Double Trouble fits very well the personality of Azkaban. It's like a new main theme of sorts and yet another example of JW being awesome under the right direction.

Hah, now I want to listen to this one again. It's one my personal little classics, for some reason.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wait a minute... Aren't you part of these people that hate the fact that the following composers didn't use Hedwig's theme a lot?

Yes I don't particularly like how it was forgotten in the non-Williams scores for the most part but in POA it is used enough I think, even though not plastered to every other scene. As Chaac says above Double Trouble continues quite fittingly the same spirit as Hedwig's Theme in POA but is a new take on the Potter world as much as the film is. The subsequent composers somehow never succeeded in capturing the magical world the same way as Williams did with his central theme. Their work sounds a bit centerless without that binding main idea keeping their scores together as they offer nothing memorable in place of Hedwig's Theme. Yes their films veered to a darker and angstier direction but that is not a reason not to write a memorable main theme or using Hedwig's Theme in the score proper.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Double Trouble perfectly captures that sort of Halloween, murky, atumnal vibe of the movie. Tonally it is absolutely spot on. It becomes a sort of true theme for Hogwarts. Not the institution itself, but of its atmosphere. It's absolutely spot on

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Double Trouble perfectly captures that sort of Halloween, murky, atumnal vibe of the movie. Tonally it is absolutely spot on. It becomes a sort of true theme for Hogwarts. Not the institution itself, but of its atmosphere. It's absolutely spot on

Agreed. If Hedwig's Theme is emblematic of Harry Potter, then Double Trouble is of the spirit of that particular film.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed. If Hedwig's Theme is emblematic of Harry Potter

It's a broad theme for the franchise, but in what way does this theme serve the character arc of HP? The melancholy family theme of the third movie does this much better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed. If Hedwig's Theme is emblematic of Harry Potter

It's a broad theme for the franchise, but in what way does this theme serve the character arc of HP? The melancholy family theme of the third movie does this much better.

Yes I agree with this. Hedwig's Theme is really a broad theme for the world and especially focused concretely on magic most often if you view the way Williams uses it. I think there was never any pretention that it would be an all encompassing theme for Harry himself or the continually darkening story arc of the series. Williams scored what he had in front of him at the time he got the footage for HPPS and the result is a children's story score with magical Hedwig's Theme and an innocent Family Theme that is more childlike and wistful than was ultimately needed in the later films. We can speculate on how he would have handled the more serious tone of the later films but I think he would have indeed developed the more personal music for Harry further. I think Williams also did the toning of POA very well, either because of Cuarón or the change of tone in the story or both and I do not see why he wouldn't have continued on that path very naturally.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having said all that, its hard to shake the sensation of being underwhelmed upon the completion of the album.

That sums it up very well. A good score, but somehow less than the sum of its parts. Nevertheless, I can easily listen to Invitation to the Ball several times in a row.

A score I should listen to again ASAP. It has been far too long since the last one.

One of the greatest scores of all time I say.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Golden Voyage of Sinbad - Miklos Rozsa

I think this is better served as a nice, 15-20 minute suite or well-arranged highlight CD. It's not a Golden Age score I want every note of, but it has those grand Rozsa highlights like the glistening harp and strings in "Sinbad's Decision" or that fierce brass in "Sinbad Discovers Koura/Kali". The stereo album is very well preserved, and the performance by the Rome Symphony Orchestra is surprisingly good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The First Great Train Robbery - Jerry Goldsmith. A refreshing change from what I usually hear from JG.

Favorites from this score are "Double Wax Job", "The Gold Arrives", and of course, the "Main" and "End" Titles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Favorites from this score are "Double Wax Job", "The Gold Arrives", and of course, the "Main" and "End" Titles.

One of my favourites is Departure, which was unreleased for a long time. Also, the moody, Alien-like Street Attack is great. And of course all the little tongue in cheek variations on the main theme like the waltz version in Rotten Row. *This* is how you write a monothematic score.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Christopher Young is just so damn good at scoring the horror genre. The score is brimming with perverse beauty, melody, and seduction. Of course, you get cues like "Second Sight Seance" that are just amazingly complex and haunting. It's amazing that he hasn't run out of good material to work with -- not with just the two Hellraiser films, but the two Grudge films, The Uninvited, Species...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hoosiers & Rudy - Jerry Goldsmith.

I love the way JG used the synths in Hoosiers though it sounded so dated today, but it's more interesting to listen to than all the second-rate RCP music combined. :P

And Rudy is just, wow. Absolutely brilliant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Music from the Edge by John Corigliano

The Adventures of Tintin The Secret of the Unicorn by John Williams

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I find that the LOTR scores have a very similar sound to some of Goldsmith's later scores, for example some cues in Star Trek V sound somewhat similar to LOTR (sound-wise, not composition-wise).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

War Horse and The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn

For the first time since December of last year. The former is still a great listen with much warmth. The latter is still mundane Williams on autopilot. "The Adventure Continues" is the only track that I actually enjoy listening to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They're nowhere near the astonishing transparency Botnick engineered, and they don't spread the instruments as cleanly across the frequencies as he does on Trek V.

Pete Cobbin's mixing tends to be muddy -- his efforts on the last four Harry Potter films (even with two different composers!) and the LOTR trilogy to be precise. Botnick not only was more detailed and more vivid, you could really sense the power and size of the orchestra.

Simon Rhodes and Geoff Foster are pretty much the only engineers that equal Botnick's quality.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Rock (Zimmer and co)

Love how bombastic this score is.

I find that the LOTR scores have a very similar sound to some of Goldsmith's later scores, for example some cues in Star Trek V sound somewhat similar to LOTR (sound-wise, not composition-wise).

I love how LOTR sounds and how Trek 5 sounds. But they don't sound similar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The best part of the LOTR scores is how wonderfully distinctive they are. You're barely a few measures into the score, and *boom* (or *poof* if you prefer), you've been transported into another world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.