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.

To say that 2007 felt lackluster will depend on a couple of things.  First, it will matter how old you were.  Second, it depended on just how bored you might have been.  There were a few surprises but in the long run nothing really all that exciting.  That does not mean films did not do well at the box office (it helps that ticket prices made several increases over the summer and into the fall in many theaters).  On to some picks for scores that stand out in the (again somewhat limited) crowd.

Brian Tyler continues to vie with Marco Beltrami for best reincarnation of Jerry Goldsmith, created an intriguing score stretching ideas of sound design in Bug.  It was a download only (which makes no sense in its resulting restricted audio).  I'm not really counting this one on a technicality.

1. I have not been a Hans Zimmer fan, but he provided two scores for summer films that were awesome CDs and worked well in their respective films.  The first out of the gate was POC3.  This was a fitting conclusion to this trilogy and showed off some of the newer directions in Zimmer's scoring style: more orchestra and a better integrated synth sound (made possible by better sampling), thematic development and motivic expansion, and a well-paced CD.  The second fine summer score was for The Simpson's Movie.  It was a bit of a surprise not to see Danny Elfman on board for this, or even Alf Clausen, but Zimmer acquited himself admirably including much of the style of the television show, lifting up the music to a blockbuster-type sound, and hitting the comedy in wonderful ways. 
2. Beltrami had a chance to right a great action score for Live Free or Die Hard and he delivered a score that worked perfectly in the film.  Too often we see sound design type ambient scoring for these action films lately, but Beltrami, working in a hybrid style, really helped ratchet up the tension in all the right places making this a far better action movie than expected.  (Cynics of the first Die Hard who avoided this film in the theater have a chance to rediscover it on DVD.) 
3. As with the first quarter, one score stands out above the others.  Giacchino's Ratatouille works so well in the film that it carries you along with the sheer energy and striking sound of its thematic writing.  There is a lot to admire here including the outstanding flute playing (showing just how awesome Hollywood musicians are) and even a new song that sounds like a classic, "Le Festin."

So there are 4 (5 with Bug) that kind of stand out over the summer.  Nicholas Hopper's score for the latest Harry Potter film actually was not horrible and even had a couple of delightful new themes to add to the mix, and the music within the film was more recessed and unobtrusive.  But the big finale, which seemed almost anticlimactic, just did not work well and the music did not help much.  This is one of those movies that probably should be re-turned to a "complete" director's cut.  He is on for the next installment so we will need to see how that goes.   

There will be a couple of days now to catch up elsewhere.  Next installments will hopefully cover the Fall and end of year releases (since some are still to show up on CD yet).