I thank Nick Barnard for his interesting review of the recent John Williams CD, and beg to add a couple of notes.
In his discussion of alternate recordings of the works, Nick fails to mention that the music for the original Star Wars trilogy was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. Of course, unlike the Wiener Philharmoniker the LSO had the advantage of recording in the studio. I recall one of the CDs had, as a bonus, multiple attempts at the beginning of the main Star Wars theme. I'm not expert enough to point to the differences, but they did ultimately choose the take that had the most "zing".
It is interesting that Nick wonders how familiar this orchestra was with the works. There is in fact a video on Youtube of Williams talking about how he came to perform the Imperial March at the concert - it was a request from the orchestra, and judging from the reaction of the audience as the music begins, it seems it was not listed in the program.
The performance of the whole piece is also on Youtube, and it strikes me that the sound lacks the bottom-end "oomph" you'd expect. I don't know how this compares with the sound on the CD.
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