Richard Kaufman Conducts 2 John Williams Tribute Concerts in Dublin

[mahler3 478]

On Friday 25th and Saturday 26th February Dublin’s National Concert Hall will become a haven for John Williams fans.

 

Both days will feature pre-concert talks hosted by Richard and I, featuring multimedia content and plenty of discussion about JW’s incredible career. 
 

Plus, many La-La Land Records John Williams albums will be available for purchase. So if there’s anything that you’re looking for it’ll save you shipping and taxes.

 

Below is the running order and the booking link for tickets is here. Hope to see you there!

 

Summon the Heroes 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games Theme
Memoirs of a Geisha Sayuri’s Theme 
Superman Love Theme 
Superman March 
Minority Report A New Beginning  
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra 
Raiders of the Lost Ark Marion’s Theme 
Raiders of the Lost Ark The Raiders March 
 

******

The Cowboys Overture 
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Harry’s Wondrous World 
A Child’s Tale Suite from The BFG  
Jurassic Park Main Theme
Jaws Main Theme  
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Forest Battle  
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: The Rise of Skywalker 
Star Wars: A New Hope Main Theme

[Tom 4,639]

The Rise of Skywalker!

[Marian Schedenig 8,174]

5 minutes ago, Tom said:

The Rise of Skywalker!

 

That would be the world (concert) premiere, right?

 

If we weren't still in the midst of a pandemic, I'd fly to Dublin just for Summon the Heroes. 

[Thor 7,471]

MINORITY REPORT was a cool selection.

 

Good luck, Tim. You're going crazy with all these Williams events lately.

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,429]

Wow that's a great program. I really wish I could attend it

[ConorPower 148]

Tickets bought for the Saturday! Very much looking forward to you pre-concert talk Tim, and of course to many of the pieces which I've never heard live before - Geisha, Minority Report, Cowboys, BFG and Rise of Skywalker!  Promises to be an excellent evening!

[TownerFan 4,983]

14 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

That would be the world (concert) premiere, right?

 

If we weren't still in the midst of a pandemic, I'd fly to Dublin just for Summon the Heroes. 

 

The piece was premiered by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra last summer - together with the other three movements from the still unreleased concert suite - at an open-air concert fully dedicated to Star Wars music.

 

I was planning to join Tim and Maestro Kaufman for the pre-concert talk and attend the concert, but sadly work obligations are keeping me busy at home. However, Tim will share stuff we're preparing together for the occasion.

[mahler3 478]

These are the LLL soundtracks which will be available for purchase at the concert hall:

[lairdo 726]

Wow, what a neat line up.

 

I love the groupings too - it feels like mini-themes especially with the Indiana Jones 1st half end and the Star Wars 2nd half one. And coming back into half 2 with a nice long cowboys suite is cool.

 

I would guess ET and Imperial March for encores should there be ones.

 

That is almost worth flying to Dublin for!

[Antonb 118]

ARRR, how much are they selling harry potter boxset for? So annoying, thats top of my bucket list!  They sell for daft money on ebay and discogs and the like!  If anyone can buy one there for a decent price and sell it to me please!

[ricsim88 244]

If direct flights had started between Halifax and Dublin, it would have been very hard not to go. Unfortunately they start in April.

[mahler3 478]

21 hours ago, Antonb said:

ARRR, how much are they selling harry potter boxset for? So annoying, thats top of my bucket list!  They sell for daft money on ebay and discogs and the like!  If anyone can buy one there for a decent price and sell it to me please!

The music shop in the lobby will be selling these at the market price dictated by LLL.

 

Admittedly the purpose of making these available is more for the wider public who wouldn’t normally see these in shops, but I wanted to let all of you know out of courtesy.

[Antonb 118]

Well hopefully if there are copies available that means they might start selling them again on the website.  I hope so. Thanks for the extra info.

[bollemanneke 3,337]

RTE Lyric FM is broadcasting this tonight.

[Antonb 118]

this is great news thanks

[mahler3 478]

And also via YouTube if you’d like to watch live. It’s a truly magnificent programme which highlights so many rarely performed gems!

 

 

[bollemanneke 3,337]

Wait, this is somehting else on Lyric FM?

No, my mistake, probably just a recording to fill the 30 minutes in their schedule. I switched to YouTube anyway.

[Antonb 118]

here we go

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,429]

Really liked that performance of Memoirs of a Geisha

[Antonb 118]

Yes nice to hear more diverse music from his catalogue. Enjoying it so far.

Always loved the love theme from superman

 

whups

[bollemanneke 3,337]

Wait a moment, when did JW record Jane Eyre with a German orchestra? I need details or I'm rejecting God!

[bollemanneke 3,337]

Time for some random thoughts. I loved Richard Kaufman’s speeches, though I got tired of the other guy in the end, who claimed Lincoln was a 2013 film and the intermission cue was called With Malice Towards No One.

There were some flubs and timing issues (I must do Jurassic Shark this honour), but I also must say that the sense of joy I felt in nearly every piece more than made up for that.

On to the pieces themselves. Is that the officially published version of Sayuri’s theme? I love the distribution of the cello notes across the woodwinds. Speaking of which, they were easily the best section of the orchestra.

Minority Report was good too, but why can’t Williams just publish it? He recorded it for the Spielberg album so he can’t be that unhappy with it.

The mix of the YouTube stream was incredibly detailed. I discovered new counterpoint material in Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra and lots of piano and trombone work in Jaws (really amazing performance there), but Marion’s theme right before Raiders March still does not work.

And again, whenever did JW record Jane Eyre with that German orchestra (intermission?) Those cellos in At Lowood were amazing!

The Cowboys love theme sounds an awful lot like Superman’s march and the tambourine player in Harry’s wondrous World was alarmingly close to the microphone. Hal Leonard really should re-print this score to include that fabled ritardando from Berlin too. Kaufman did one, but it wasn’t as good.

And why does that BFG suite change every time they play it live somewhere? Why was it so short? No one beats Dirk Brossé’s LSO version either. Oh, and can I just say how cute it was to hear an Irish audience say ‘big friendly giant’? I miss Ireland.

I loved how Kaufman took the Jurassic Park fanfare so fast and I still think The Forest Battle is an utterly unnecessary concert arrangement, whether I heard new details in it tonight or not. I’m also very happy JW didn’t go for a bombastic ending for TROS: I was afraid he would give it an ending like the concert one for the TFA suite, which really didn’t work for me and felt too similar to ANH. The main titles also started out very fast, but then they briefly went Viennese (shame!) and when they switched to C major, they inexplicably slowed down too. The very fast rendition of the flying theme, though, was a  perfect end to the evening.
 

[Tom 4,639]

From what I could tell, ROS was unchanged from the OST.  It was performed much more slowly.  I prefer the faster tempo, but the piece allows for either approach.  

[mahler3 478]

Jane Eyre is a London recording, presumably he got confused with Heidi which was a mixture of London and Germany.

 

It was a fantastic day and looking forward to doing it all over again tomorrow! 
 

Here are some photos and the pre-concert talk will be hosted at The Legacy of John Williams soon along with exclusive videos.

[igger6 894]

Wow, for all the Geisha recordings I thought I was aware of, I’m not super-familiar with this arrangement. Does anyone know a recorded version of this concert suite?

 

 By the way, two pieces in, I’d buy a Blu-Ray of this concert in a heartbeat.

 

And for the record, I think the updated concert ending to TFA is a masterstroke. It’s like Williams reached Giacchino levels of fanboy glee for thirty seconds.

[bollemanneke 3,337]

So where do we get the Jane Eyre recording?

[mahler3 478]

Are you sure it wasn’t the late 80s Boston Pops recording? Otherwise the original score was released by LLL a few years back.

 

Thanks for your in depth review of the concert by the way.

[bollemanneke 3,337]

Oh yes, absolutely sure it wasn't the Boston Pops suite. I've never heard At Lowood played like that. And it wasn't LLL either. The last track had some distortion, though.

[Miguel Andrade 1,260]

By the way, ahead of the concert, it was broadcast a live recording from 2018 of his Horn Concerto, with Radovan Vlatkovic and the Croatian Radiotelevision Symphony under Enrico Dindo.

[mahler3 478]

2 hours ago, bollemanneke said:

Oh yes, absolutely sure it wasn't the Boston Pops suite. I've never heard At Lowood played like that. And it wasn't LLL either. The last track had some distortion, though.

Maybe it was the Charles Gerhardt rendition from the 1970s? I’ll listen to the stream Mon.

[Miguel Andrade 1,260]

6 hours ago, mahler3 said:

Maybe it was the Charles Gerhardt rendition from the 1970s? I’ll listen to the stream Mon.

 

I believe Gerhardt just recorded the scherzo.

[bollemanneke 3,337]

He did. Why would one record a whole suite as written by JW after all?

[Tom 4,639]

18 hours ago, igger6 said:

Wow, for all the Geisha recordings I thought I was aware of, I’m not super-familiar with this arrangement. Does anyone know a recorded version of this concert suite?

 

I could be mistaken, but I think this was the first "concert" piece from the movie Williams would perform.  Once he put together the full Cello suite, the first movement of that become the standard.  I do not believe that it has been recorded.  

[ConorPower 148]

I was lucky to attend the Saturday performance in the flesh. It was a real treat to hear the NSO and Kaufman play so many pieces I'd never heard live before: Minority Report, Cowboys, Geisha, BFG, TROS. But it was Jaws that really blew me away. It seems all the more visceral and terrifying in the flesh. And as ever with Williams concerts, it was wonderful to see how diverse the audience was, and that it was basically sold out! Hats off to the NSO! And also Richard Kaufman and Tim Burden, who gave an immensely entertaining and informative pre-concert talk (which also featured a beautiful introductory video full of great pictures and quotes from JW)! 

[igger6 894]

Also, it must be said that the NSO has an unbelievable logo.  Not as artful as the LSO, but so clever!

[King Mark 3,625]

Rise of Skywalker is such an exceptionally beautiful concert piece. I was hoping the concert hall version might be more distinct than the OST version though. I also thought he might have written a more developed "suite" 

 

I just wish Williams would conduct it in Vienna especially since the horns/trumpets are so beautiful there.

[Raiders of the SoundtrArk 2,429]

Really hope too that it will make the encores

[igger6 894]

That would be awesome, but I think the age of unpredictable encores (read: encores that weren't written between '77 and '82) are over.

[Steve 589]

.

[Steve 589]

On 26/02/2022 at 1:11 PM, bollemanneke said:

Oh yes, absolutely sure it wasn't the Boston Pops suite. I've never heard At Lowood played like that. And it wasn't LLL either. The last track had some distortion, though.

It says "West german radio symphony orchestra under the direction of John Williams himself." How can that be? I've never heard that recording. The record must be from the 80s, but somehow I doubt it was Williams himself conducting. 

[igger6 894]

Yeah, I heard that credit, too, and wrote it off as a mistake.

[fommes 153]

Would the Jane Eyre recording by any chance come from this concert?

https://presspack.rte.ie/2020/07/10/the-full-score-with-liz-nolan-377/

[Miguel Andrade 1,260]

I think that concert only featured the scherzo "To Thornfield".

[Jurassic Shark 12,030]

On 25/02/2022 at 11:01 PM, bollemanneke said:

There were some flubs and timing issues (I must do Jurassic Shark this honour)

 

Hey, I didn't play this time.

[ConorPower 148]

Following on from the John Williams 90th birthday concert, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra played music from all nine Star Wars films under Stephen Bell (who played for JW on AotC and RoS), in full Vader regalia, to celebrate May the Fourth. A welcomed return of what had nearly become an annual event at the national concert hall until Covid cancellations in 2020/21. Apparently this was a world first programme containing music from all nine films [?], although I've no way of verifying this.

The concert was recorded and should be available on RTÉ Lyric FM at some stage.

Programme included:

20th Century Fox Fanfare + Main Title

TPM - The Flag Parade, Anakins Theme, Duel of the Fates [without a choir sadly]

AotC - Across the Stars

RoS - Battle of the Heroes

ANH - Here They Come, Princess Leia's Theme

ESB - Imperial March, Yoda's Theme, Asteroid Field

RotJ -Luke and Leia, Parade of the Ewoks

TFA - Rey's Theme, Scherzo for X-Wings, The Jedi Steps (some concert arrangement which I'd never heard before, I'm used to it leading into the credits)

TLJ - Rebellion is Reborn

TRoS - The Rise of Skywalker

Throne Room and Finale