May 28, 2008

• JW at Pops

  I know a concert review is a little silly since you can't go to the concert yourself.  But for John Williams fans I thought I would share a little from Film Night at the Pops last week.  The concert was unusual in that it was in two halves instead of the more typical three segments.

  The first half opened with Sound the Bells, a brief trumpet and bell piece originally written for a wedding.  It was nice, but the ensemble seemed to be a bit off on this as it started--though it could have been a result of where we were sitting in the hall.

  Then there was a 10-minute or so suite of music from Far and Away.  The suite hits all the main themes of the score.  A substitution for A. Newman's "Cathy's Theme" was the violin and orchestra solo version of the "Sabrina Theme".  This is the same arrangement from those Itzhak Perlman Cinema Serenade recordings and was gorgeously performed--this is truly one of the maestro's most beautiful pieces.

  The second section of this half featured music from David Lean films.  First up was an extended suite of music from Dr. Zhivago.  As is often the case, the film scenes are just extra stuff without much connection with the music being played specifically.  There was one truly perfect moment though when a waltz sequence came up perfectly matched by the live orchestra--a true highlight. 

  Williams then introduced 3 excerpt's from Arnold Bax's score to Oliver Twist as being from a score he has always admired.  Two of these are the same as the excerpts recorded by Bernard Herrmann on his old Phase 4 Decca release.  (The complete score recently appeared on the Chandos label).  These were all excellent pieces and did what good concerts do, introduce something unfamiliar to an audience.  The first half closed with music from Lawrence of Arabia in another extended suite with film accompaniment.  Williams pointed out that unlike more recent films (like say, Indy4) all the scenes here were real locations.

  For the second half of the concert, Lynn Redgrave came on stage to share a few bits of narration about Harry Potter.  This was not so much a suite with narration as individual concert versions of the film music with narrative in between the music.  Included were: Hedwig's Theme, Harry's Wondrous World, Numus 2000, Diagon Alley, The Chamber of Secrets, Fawkes the Phoenix (another great piece), and a couple of other shorter cues.  Some of this was with film accompaniment. 

  The main reason for many of us being there was to hear concert premieres of music from the new Indy film.  Unfortunately the program did not list anything so it's value is diminished for collectors.  But the single choice from the film was "The Adventures of Mutt" which works fairly well as a quick orchestral showpiece though it does not have quite the focus of other concert works from the Indy films.  As an encore, the orchestra played the "Raider's March" giving us both the main Indy theme and Marion's theme.  As a final encore, the orchestra performed "Flying" from E.T.--a popular encore here at the Pops.

  The concert went past 10 PM which was unusual and the audience wanted some Star Wars music, but overall it was a great evening at Pops.

  • 11:17 am
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