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Which concert was better, Vienna or Berlin?


bollemanneke

Vienna Vs. Berlin, which one was better?  

39 members have voted

  1. 1. The Program

  2. 2. John Williams' Speeches

  3. 3. The Performances

  4. 4. Flubs, Timing Issues and Lacklustre Renditions



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7 hours ago, oierem said:

My ideal concert program would only include music form three or four film scores, at at least 20-30 minutes of music for each (either as a suite or as a continuous piece). 

 

That'd be cool!

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Goldsmith's 2001 LSO concert at the Royal Albert Hall is probably the best big composer-conducts-his-own-film-music-with-a-major-orchestra concert we've had so far from a programme standpoint. Though to be fair, Williams has an impossible task if you consider how many people go to these concerts to hear his greatest hits for the first time in their lives and that despite all the highlight concert reductions, he still can't pack half of them into one concert. Even with Berlin you get semi knowledgeable Williams fans (who are no strangers to classical concerts) who would have wished for more highlights in place of the lesser (i.e. less well known) stuff.

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14 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Goldsmith's 2001 LSO concert at the Royal Albert Hall is probably the best big composer-conducts-his-own-film-music-with-a-major-orchestra concert we've had so far from a programme standpoint. Though to be fair, Williams has an impossible task if you consider how many people go to these concerts to hear his greatest hits for the first time in their lives and that despite all the highlight concert reductions, he still can't pack half of them into one concert. Even with Berlin you get semi knowledgeable Williams fans (who are no strangers to classical concerts) who would have wished for more highlights in place of the lesser (i.e. less well known) stuff.


Precisely.  It’s like seeing The Stones; 95% of the audience wants Satisfaction and Start Me Up, and only 5% want the 80s b-sides.

Just now, GlastoEls said:


Precisely.  It’s like seeing The Stones; 95% of the audience wants Satisfaction and Start Me Up, and only 5% want the 80s b-sides.


In fact, maybe 5 people TOTAL want the 80s b-sides!

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9 minutes ago, GlastoEls said:

Precisely.  It’s like seeing The Stones; 95% of the audience wants Satisfaction and Start Me Up, and only 5% want the 80s b-sides.

 

I want Gimme Shelter and She's a Rainbow.

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2 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Goldsmith's 2001 LSO concert at the Royal Albert Hall is probably the best big composer-conducts-his-own-film-music-with-a-major-orchestra concert we've had so far from a programme standpoint.

Has a recording survived? Or just the programme?

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On 17/10/2021 at 11:07 AM, Sibelius6 said:

 

 

I liked Vienna more, but this was still amazing!! Love JW.

 

My seat wasn't very good acoustically in Berlin, now when I have heard this wonderful DC version, I'm not sure anymore. Lets say I'm happy I was able to experience both.

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Thinking about the program, I think one of the most succesful ones I’ve ever seen is the LA Phil celebration in 2014. There, they truly celebrated JW the musician in a broad sense and it was less about crowd pleasers, even though it had Darth Vader on stage during the encore.

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1 minute ago, Remco said:

Thinking about the program, I think one of the most succesful ones I’ve ever seen is the LA Phil celebration in 2014. There, they truly celebrated JW the musician in a broad sense and it was less about crowd pleasers, even though it had Darth Vader on stage during the encore.

 

I have the blu-ray of that, it's a fantastic concert.

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Why can't we simply enjoy both? We are so lucky that JW got to conduct both orchestras, the two leading institutions in the world. Nobody would have thought that would happen in Nov 2018. I feel blessed I could attend them both. If you were not there you can't really rate...both were magical. Hard to describe.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 20/10/2021 at 5:37 AM, bollemanneke said:

I'm still surprised that, for me, nobody seems to be able to rival the Boston Pop's version of Flight to Neverland. Even the LSO version is missing... something.

 

The issue with that Boston one is the timpani that comes in a bar late at 0:59.

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  • 3 months later...
On 18/10/2021 at 6:13 AM, Sibelius6 said:

 

Yes, the tempo in Jurassic Park was ridiculous!! I usually hate too slow tempos but that was too much, the piece lost its religious touch I think.

Both Vienna and Berlin played Jurassic too fast.  Berlin was just worse.  Williams just conducts the main theme faster than the original in concerts.  Always has.  I’ve never heard it played at the original tempo in any of the performances I’ve seen / heard.  Oddly, though, the tempo changes to spot-on during the Journey to the Island portion in Vienna whereas it’s *still* too fast in Berlin.

 

FWIW, I’m about 3/4 through Berlin right now, and I enjoy both shows, and find that both have their respective strengths and weaknesses.  I agree with the earlier poster who said that Berlin feels more “restrained”.  I can’t put my finger on it.  Sometimes that restraint is a positive.  Other times it isn’t.  And this is a strictly a personal preference, but I rather dislike how animated nearly all of the musicians are in Berlin.  No impact on the music itself, of course, but I just find it distracting in a way that Vienna isn’t.

 

Most of the people here have forgotten more about the minutiae of these things than I will ever learn, but if I *had* to choose one or the other of these concerts to break out to show someone who’d never seen a JW performance, right now I’d pick Vienna.

 

EDIT: In case it’s not clear from above, I wasn’t at the actual shows; I’m talking about the Blu-ray’s.

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6 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

I love the Vienna tempo/performance of the first section and the Berlin tempo/performance of the second. Will be updating this poll after Vienna has shown what it does with a second chance.

I think the orchestral world can't wait for your rating.

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