Music Album Review: 'John Williams Conducts Music from the Star Wars Saga'

(C) 1999 Philips Music

John Williams Conducts Music from the Star Wars Saga - John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra

Although John Williams has been working as a performer, composer, and conductor since the 1950s, most film score fans believe that the Golden Era of his illustrious career is marked by the eight-year period that started with the premiere of Steven Spielberg's 1975 chiller Jaws and concluded with the 1983 release of the conclusion of the Classic Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi

Not only did the spiritual heir to Hollywood's Studio Era galaxy of composers as Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Bernard Herrmann write the 14 compositions featured in this 1999 Philips collection of music from the Star Wars saga, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman: The Movie, and E.T., but Maestro Williams composed film scores for Dracula, The Fury, Jaws 2, 1941, Black Sunday, Monsignor, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, just to name a handful.

Williams had made his mark in the late 1960s and early 1970s scoring both television shows ("The Land of the Giants") and feature films (The Reivers, The Sugarland Express), but it was his work for Jaws that earned him his second Academy Award and led his friend and constant collaborator Steven Spielberg to recommend Williams to writer-director George Lucas, who was then in pre-production for what was to be the first of nine Skywalker Saga films, Star Wars.

In this recording, Williams leads the Boston Pops Orchestra in two selections from the film that would later be retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977): Main Theme (Track 1) and Princess Leia (Track 2), presented in their concert-hall arrangements. They are complemented by three selections from "The Empire Strikes Back Orchestral Suite" -- The Asteroid Field (Track 3), Yoda's Theme (Track 4), and the classic motif for Darth Vader, The Imperial March (Track 5).

Rounding out the music from the Star Wars saga are four segments of the Return of the Jedi concert suite, Parade of the Ewoks (Track 6), Luke & Leia (Track 7), Jabba the Hutt (Track 8), which features a wonderful tuba solo that comically conveys the girth and evil of the galaxy's vilest crime-lord, and The Forest Battle (Track 9).

A year after the phenomenal success of Star Wars, Williams contributed the iconic score to Richard (The Omen) Donner's big-budget, all-star cast adaptation of Superman. Its heroic yet slightly tongue-in-cheek themes include the rousing March (Track 10 and the sweepingly romantic Love Theme (Track 11), heard here in its full "end titles" arrangement.

In 1982, following the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Williams teamed with director Spielberg again and produced one of his most acclaimed works -- the music for E.T.. In Adventures on Earth (Track 12) and The Flying Theme (Track 13) , the Boston Pops performs thematic material used in the third act of Spielberg's gentle fable about a lonely 9-year-old boy and the stranded extraterrestrial botanist he befriends. The music conveys images of fast bicycle pedaling, a desperate but bloodless chase between Federal agents and E.T.'s child-protectors, and the final redeeming moment of healing and farewells.

John Williams Conducts Music From the Star Wars Saga concludes with the 10-minute long "Suite" (Track 14) from 1977's UFO classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Starting out with weird atonal music reminiscent of Bela Bartok and other early 20th Century composers, Williams' themes become more melodic and awe inspiring as the mystery behind the UFO sightings is resolved by a peaceful "close encounter" between humanity and another space-faring civilization, reminding of us of the film's log-line, "We are not alone."

Although most of the tracks have appeared in other and better albums, this CD still makes a nice holiday gift for music lovers who don't own any of the soundtrack albums or other John Williams/Boston Pops CDs.