Release Date: 07 January 2006
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 747313502028
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: STAR WARS AND OTHER SCI-FI CLASSICS
Description
Star Wars and other Sci-Fi Classics The Music of John Williams and other Great Film Composers Since time immemorial mankind has sought the unattainable, and from the earliest days of cinema the onscreen depiction of space exploration and prophecy has provided an inexhaustible source of fascination and challenge to the moving picture industry. Around the turn of the twentieth century the pioneering Méliès oversaw the first experiments in marrying these mystical elements, and by the late 1920s space-travel had further evolved by way of Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon, before sound-on-film laid the foundations for more full-scale exploitation. From that time onwards variations on original themes, and re-workings of Wellsian themes of the War of the Worlds kind, some serious others less than serious in intention, have poured onto the screens of both cinema and television. For many, Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM, 1968) remains the standard allegory upon the space genre as a whole. Variously rated as 'hypnotic', 'tepid' and 'a trip without LSD', this monumental satire won an Oscar for its visual effects. A composite drawn from various classics, its score is best remembered for its borrowings from Richard Strauss's 1896 tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra. Since 1974, when he was first associated with the lush, state-of-the-art cinematic displays of Spielberg to which movie-goers are now long accustomed, John Williams (born 1937) has been rated the genre's prime practitioner. Williams's eighty-odd scores have earned him more than 35 Academy Award nominations, five Oscars and six British Film Awards, but more than this they have provided musical impetus to a legion of television and wide-screen clones, mirroring an unflagging cinema and home entertainment thirst for intergalactic fantasy and conflict and space-age Supermen. The son of a film studio session musician, the New York-born John Towner Williams grew up in a musical environment. In his youth he learned to play the piano, trombone, trumpet and clarinet, and following his family's move in 1948 to Los Angeles he mastered orchestration (at University College, under Robert van Epps) and composition (privately, with Castelnuovo-Tedesco). Later, he studied the piano in New York (at Juilliard, with Rosina Lhévinne) and during the early 1950s, as Johnny Williams, found regular work in the jazz idiom, as a session pianist for a variety of record labels, including Bethlehem, Kapp, Dot and RCA. Johnny Williams's earliest experience as a composer, arranger and conductor was in television (in such series as M-Squad and Wagon Train), but by the decade's end he had transferred to the big screen, beginning, for United Artists, with I Passed For White (1960) and The Secret Ways (1961). During the ensuing decades the enterprising Williams applied his creative imagination and entrepreneurial flair to a diverse range of musical styles. Among the most admired of his early scores w
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Yaqi Yang; Margarita Parsamyan; Robynne Redmon; Minghao Liu; Frank Ragsdale; Kim Josephson; Kevin S
Vilmos Csikos; Olivier Lechardeur; Manon Lamaison
Tomas Cotik; Martingale Ensemble; Ken Selden
