Music Album Review: "Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores - John Williams & the Boston Pops Orchestra'

(C) 1995, 2017 Sony Classical/Sony Masterworks

On November 14, 1995, four years after the release of The Spielberg-Williams Collaboration, Sony Classical dropped a sequel to that album by John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra. Titled Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores – John Williams & the Boston Pops Orchestra, this one-disc recording presented 15 themes composed and conducted by the Academy Award-winning maestro for director Steven Spielberg.  

Official Sony Classical Video: The Basket Game from Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Spielberg-Williams collaboration began in the early 1970s when the then 27-year-old director asked John Williams if he would score his first feature film, The Sugarland Express (1974). Spielberg loved Williams’ score for the 1969 film The Reivers and wanted the music for his set-in-Texas comedy-drama to have that same contemporary Western sensibility.

The two men got along well, and since 1973, Williams has composed the music for all but two of Spielberg’s films (The Color Purple and Bridge of Spies).

As John Burlingame wrote in the liner notes booklet for John Williams – Steven Spielberg: The Ultimate Collection (the 2017 Sony Classical box set which includes a reissued edition of Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores):

Over the ninety-year history of sound film, there have been a handful of instances when a director and a composer have formed a longtime partnership that resulted in a series of classic scores, creating music that stands the test of time. Film historians cite Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann, for example, or Federico Fellini and Nino Rota; others might name Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, or Blake Edwards and Henry Mancini.

None, however, have been as long or as fruitful as the forty-three-year collaboration of Steven Spielberg and John Williams. None have encompassed such a wide range of subject matter or, more significantly, have had such an enormous impact on worldwide popular culture.

Official Sony Classical Video: Theme from Jurassic Park

The music presented in Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores spans a 14-year-long fragment of the now 44-year-long Spielberg-Williams collaboration: from 1979’s World War II comedy 1941 to 1993’s Holocaust drama Schindler’s List, the 15 cues are from just six of the Oscar-winning duo’s films – 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Hook, Jurassic Park, and Schindler’s List.

Track List:

1. Flying Theme from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

2. Main Theme from Jurassic Park

3. Remembrances from Schindler's List (Tamara Smirnova - Violin)

4. Flight to Neverland from Hook

5.The Battle of Hollywood from 1941 (Includes the Irish folk song "The Rakes of Mallow")

6. Smee's Plan from Hook

7. The Barrel Chase from Jaws

8. My Friend, the Brachiosaurus from Jurassic Park

9. Jim's New Life from Empire of the Sun

10. The Dialogue from Close Encounters of the Third Kind

11. The Lost Boys' Ballet from Hook

12. Main Theme from Schindler's List (Tamara Smirnova - Violin)

13. The Basket Case from Raiders of the Lost Ark

14. The Face of Pan from Hook

15. The Banquet from Hook

Curiously, producer-engineer Shawn Murphy devotes one-third (five tracks) of Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores to themes from Hook, Spielberg’s big-budget take on a grownup Peter Pan and his attempts to rescue his kids from the vengeful Captain Hook. This is the only Steven Spielberg film I’ve watched and not liked; as Roger Ebert wrote in his 1991 review, Hook is “a lugubrious retread of a once-magical idea.”

Of course, John Williams wrote a gorgeous score for Hook, including Flight to Neverland, Smee’s Plan, The Lost Boys’ Ballet, The Face of Pan, and The Banquet. They’re all nice, especially the rousing, rollicking Flight to Neverland, but honestly, I would have preferred tracks from other pre-1995 Spielberg films.

Official Sony Classical Video: 'Flying Theme from E.T.'

The Spielberg-as-Wunderkind Era is, of course, well-represented in Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores; we get to hear one selection each from Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial here. None of them are repeats from The Spielberg-Williams Collaboration; here E.T. is represented by the famous Flying theme, while Close Encounters of the Third Kind eschews the long Suite and presents us with the briefer but more famous The Dialogue (which is also known as The Conversation by CE3K soundtrack fans). 

Official Sony Classical Video: Remembrances from 'Schindler's List'

Tamara Smirnova

First Associate Concertmaster, Boston Symphony Orchestra; Concertmaster, Boston Pops Orchestra (Photo Credit: Boston Symphony Orchestra)

Mature Spielberg gets most of the spotlight in Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores, even though Temporarily Insane Spielberg almost eclipses him with those five tracks from Hook.  Schindler’s List, Spielberg’s first Best Picture Oscar winner, is accorded two lovely, elegiac themes, Remembrances and the well-known Theme from Schindler’s List. In this recording, Tamara Smirnova, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s current First Associate Concertmaster, performs the hauntingly beautiful violin solos that are steeped in the traditions of Eastern European Jewish folk music.

There are also two selections from Spielberg’s other film for 1993 – Jurassic Park. Here, Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores gives listeners the iconic Main Theme from the blockbuster film based on Michael Crichton’s novel about resurrected dinosaurs in a theme park beset by Murphy’s Law. Producer Murphy also includes the quieter My Friend, the Brachiosaurus.

All in all, Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores makes a nice addition to any music collection. Fans of Maestro Williams and the world-famous Boston Pops Orchestra will appreciate this recording, which was released two years after Williams stepped down as the ensemble’s principal conductor and handed his baton to Keith Lockhart. I have a few quibbles about so much space being devoted to music from Hook, but other than that, I heartily recommend Williams on Williams: The Classic Spielberg Scores.

Sources: 

Roger Ebert Review: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hook-1991