MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUS

John WILLIAMS (b. 1932)
Full tracklist at end of review 
SONY 88697 70636 2 [186:08]

Experience Classicsonline


Like it or not John Williams has dominated silver-screen culture since the 1990s. His cinema music is often the film; the film is often the music. There is a concert dimension to his work as there was also for his great idols - Rozsa, Korngold, Waxman and Herrmann. On this album we encounter both faces and realise there is no great chasm between them.
 
Discs 1 and 2 address the concert hall world with the occasional departure. The third takes us on an exhilarating romp through the film music firmament - a world he has sent spinning and glittering. Williams has a marvellously piercing emotive touch that cuts through even a pachyderm's insensitivity. I recall for example coming out of a 1998 cinema showing of Saving Private Ryan with tears streaming down my face: the music and images intensify each other.
 
CD 1
Air and Simple Gifts was written for the Obama inauguration and is laid out for cello, piano, violin and clarinet. It keys into the same material that gripped Copland but imparts to it the fruity density of Howells' Piano Quartet. American Journey is a series of touching and sometimes portentous vignettes of the history of the USA. There's a dash of Copland in Popular Entertainment and of Saving Private Ryan in Immigration and Building and Flight and Technology, of Glass and Reich in Arts and Sports. The two worlds come into an even more candid collision - or collusion - in the Suite for Memoirs of a Geisha in which Yo-Yo Ma is soloist - such is John Williams' pull. The writing is roundedly impassioned. Ma's cello is wonderfully sonorous and singingly delicate in Going to School. It is an engrossingly fine score, full of delicate effects that steer well clear of kitsch Chinoiserie. The Song for World Peace - now there's a gauntlet thrown down. It is in fact a slow and satisfying evolutionary ascent to majestic heights.
 
CD 2
Summon the Heroes has the odd drum salvo and brass blast redolent of a certain Copland Fanfare. It all works well and there is something of the Superman score to it too. Odd that the Utah Symphony are conducted by the composer for Hymn to New England - it’s another skilled fanfare relieved by soft contoured undulating string writing. Sound The Bells is another eager and dazzlingly bright fanfare piece.
 
The Five Sacred Trees is a fine bassoon concerto - a sort of Celtic counterpart to The Geisha suite written at a time when things Celtic were in the ascendant: from Riverdance to Titanic. Craeb Uisnig and Dathi have a considerable insurgency of dissonance which we will again encounter on CD 3 in Born on the Fourth of July and the music for Close Encounters.
 
Elegy is a short heartfelt piece, here played by Yo-Yo Ma. It is in Geisha Suite mode. It’s a fine addition to the concert repertoire; any cellist contender for BBC Young Musician of the Year and similar should consider it as a contest piece.
 
The game and indefatigable Mission Theme will be known to Americans as the music for NBC Nightly News. March from the quirky film 1941 is Yankee-doodle rambunctious and not short on brazen confidence. The Olympic Spirit embodies the surging flag-waving of the stadium and especially the spectacle of the opening ceremonies.
 
CD 3
This disc is the deliverer of instant and usually uncomplicated enjoyment. While Williams clearly does obeisance to Herrmann’s North by North-West in Jaws and to Holst’s Planets in the Star Wars main title, his musical wizardry delivers time after time. Elite orchestras directed by the composer are everywhere and that's also true for the harmonica-dominated score for Sugarland Express. Toots Thielemans brings out the down-South and dirty Galahadry of the music reminiscent of a composer we never hear of these days: Bill Russo. Russo had at least two major pieces on DG LPs in the 1970s. The Flying Theme is done broadly and with intoxicating eagerness - a touch of Disney here, I fancy. The suite of three movements from Born on the Fourth of July is from a deeper, tougher vein with the gears of disillusion fully engaged cog by cog. Oily dissonance is strongly drawn in as it is also in the Ligeti-style Close Encounters. Perlman's version of the theme from Schindler's List is all throaty emotion - old gold glowing in auburn embers. A quick outing from the Theme from Jurassic Park has Williams taking us from still and unprepossessing ruminations into that broad optimism-loaded string hymn which he took onwards to a further peak in Saving Private Ryan. Cadillac of the Skies from Empire of the Sun comes complete with angelic choir here provided by the Bostonians rather than by Hollywood. The rambunctious Raiders March is wild and woolly with its Waltonian eddies and under-currents. More of the similar in The Throne Room and Finale from Star Wars - total immersion. It is perhaps a little cheese-cakey in its revelling in victory of the worthy over the wicked. Hats off to one of film music’s Greats: John Williams. Here's to the next 100 films.  

Rob Barnett

See also reviews of the Barber, Bernstein, Copland and Ives sets.

Tracklisting
CD 1 66:00
Air and Simple Gifts
American Journey
Song for World Peace
 
CD 2 68:22
Summon the Heroes (for Tim Morrison)
Hymn to New England
The Five Sacred Trees (Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra)
Sound the Bells!
Elegy for Cello and Orchestra
The Mission Theme (Theme for NBC News)
March from 1941
The Olympic Spirit
 
CD 371:14
Main Title from Star Wars
Theme from Jaws
Theme from Sugarland Express
Flying Theme from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Suite from Born on the Fourth of July
Theme from Schindler's List
Theme from Jurassic Park
Cadillac of the Skies from Empire of the Sun (Voice)
Raiders of the Lost Ark from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind/When You Wish Upon a Star Medley; Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Excerpts) When You Wish Upon A Star (interpolated) Throne Room and Finale from Star Wars

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.