Lights, Camera...Music!
Six Decades of John Williams
Boston Pops/Keith Lockhart
BSO Classics 1704
Total Time:  76:24
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

The early days of John Williams’ tenure with the Boston Pops was a little shaky at first, but one only need head to Boston for a Film Night at the Pops to realize that those early bumps have led to an important collaboration and appreciation for Williams’ work as composer and conductor.  However, since Keith Lockhart took over the reins of the Pops, the ensemble has not put out any dedicated Williams’ discs, though some of his pieces have appeared on their first releases.  The present release has certainly made up for that deficiency with a collection of pieces that explore the width and breadth of Williams’ work.  The recordings were mostly made at this year’s April concerts celebrating the composer’s work.  The Force Awakens music, which concludes the album, was recorded last May and is the first appearance of the suite pulled from the film score.

The orchestra is really on superb footing here in this wide range of music that begins with music from Heidi and the “Overture” to Goodbye, My Chips.  The “Main Title” from The Towering Inferno is perhaps a bit breezy though as it zips forward in its opening bars.  The tempo of the gorgeous “Men of Yorktown March” from Midway is also a bit fast in its first half, but the slow down into the finale works quite well and makes for a dramatic and emotionally satisfying finish.  It is hard to believe that this march, one of the composer’s most moving and lyrical, has tended to languish behind the more familiar title march from the film.  “Night Journeys” from Dracula gives us a bit of the mysterious style of the composer and this darker romantic theme before we shift gears to music from E.T..  In 2009, Williams took the harp idea that plays while Elliot introduces E.T. to things in his room and this is the resulting “Stargazers” which received a premiere recording here.  Williams own traversal of the “Devil’s Dance” from The Witches of Eastwick has perhaps slightly more of a wink than the version here, which is just as compelling in this interpretation.  Themes from Sabrina and The Patriot are good traversals of these more popular pieces.  Another wonderful surprise is the “Reunion and Finale” from Sleepers.  This particular excerpt from the score appeared on some of Williams’ concerts at the time which had fans hoping it would make it to a recording of its own, but the wait is now over.  These opening themes and scenes are tapped off with “Viktor’s Tale” from The Terminal.

Williams put together a brief suite of music from The Return of the Jedi for his Out of This World release that featured science-fiction film and television selections.  Having put together a suite of selections from The Force Awakens that appeared on concerts last year, we get to hear one of the first recordings of this suite which begins with the “March of the Resistance” and then moves on to the beautiful “Rey’s Theme.”  A little “Scherzo for X-Wings” then provides some contrast before we move to the powerful “The Jedi Steps” and the “Finale”.  In some respects, it is rather nice to have a Williams’ collection that does not just give us another tired performance of the original Star Wars “Main Title.”

The performances here are captured well in the acoustic of Symphony Hall.  It may very well be one of their best recordings under Lockhart .  The wait has certainly been worth it!  Another nice bonus is that purchase of the CD allows you to also get a download of the album from some vendors.

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.