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.
Re: John Williams in Vienna
Posted by Des Hutchinson on September 17, 2020, 11:27 am, in reply to "John Williams in Vienna"
We've probably all been spoilt for oomph in the Imperial March by the Cincinnati Pops/Kunzel version, delivered in typical Telarc 'concerto for bass-drum and orchestra' style.
Thankyou Ford for the link to the YouTube performance. I have not seen that. I did think about referencing the LSO OST recording but thought that I should stick with comparing this new version to other 'studio excerpts'. Your comment about 'zing' is interesting. There is the fascinating CD of the Walton OST for Battle of Britain which contains 2 versions of the great "Battle in the Air" cue conducted by Malcolm Arnold (who probably wrote a lot of that cue too!). The liner makes the point that one version is significantly more frenetic than the other - I think that was the version that ended up in the film as well.
This Vienna recording is good considering the technical challenges of recording this kind of repertoire live but it is not overtly spectacular in the way Telarc clearly sought to be. Arguably the Telarc approach did not always serve the music it recorded but to my ear in this type of film music it did. Perhaps I'm just a fan of bass-drum concerti! My favourite ever cue they recorded was Superman - The Planet Krypton - all bass drum fans check it out.....
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We've probably all been spoilt for oomph in the Imperial March by the Cincinnati Pops/Kunzel version, delivered in typical Telarc 'concerto for bass-drum and orchestra' style.