Music Album Review: 'John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy'
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| Cover Design by Howard Fritzson. Photos (C) 1977, 1980, 1983 by Lucasfilm Ltd. (C) 1990 CBS Records |
Some day I’m going to
build a recording studio with a sound as live as if it were inside a cathedral!
– George Lucas to composer John
Williams after the recording sessions for The Empire Strikes Back score, 1980
In March of 1990, Star
Wars creator George Lucas hired 90 San Francisco Bay area classical
musicians and created a one-time ensemble which he called The Skywalker
Symphony Orchestra. Between March 19 and 20, Lucas, composer-conductor John
Williams, and a recording team led by producer Thomas Z. Shepard worked with this
unique group of players at the brand-new recording studio in Lucas’s Skywalker
Ranch, located in Marin County, California.
The result was Sony Classical’s John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy – Star Wars
* The Empire Strikes Back * Return of the Jedi, a 13-track compilation
album of concert arrangements of music from the original Star Wars film trilogy.
Music is a major
emotional underpinning for all my films. While writing the Star Wars script, I listened to music for inspiration
and would actually arrange the script into various “symphonies.” I visualized
the scenes in terms of symphonic music – large, grand, theatrical scores – as opposed
to rock and roll or electronic music. – George Lucas in the liner notes for John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star
Wars Trilogy.
The album presents 13 themes from Star Wars (aka Star Wars –
Episode IV: A New Hope), The Empire
Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.
Six tracks represent Star Wars, three
represent The Empire Strikes Back, and
four tracks are from the Return of the
Jedi score.
And although the musical selection is similar to that found
in Varese Sarabande’s John Williams: The
Star Wars Trilogy (1983), the track list is arranged differently:
1. Star
Wars – Main Theme (Star Wars): 5:51
2. Princess
Leia’s Theme (Star Wars): 4:43
3. The
Little People (Star Wars): 5:15
4. The
Imperial March (The Empire Strikes Back):
3:03
5. Yoda’s
Theme (The Empire Strikes Back): 3:15
6. Parade
of the Ewoks (Return of the Jedi):
4:59
7. The
Asteroid Field (The Empire Strikes Back):
4:34
8. Luke
and Leia (Return of the Jedi): 4:59
9. The
Cantina Band (Star Wars): 2:16
10. Here
They Come! (Star Wars): 2:16
11. Jabba
the Hutt (Return of the Jedi): 3:07
12. The
Forest Battle (Return of the Jedi): 4:20
13. Throne
Room and Finale (Star Wars): 7:57
My Take
I am, I must admit, a Star
Wars music junkie. While it is not true that I will buy any CD or digital
audio album if it is labeled Star Wars or
is credited to Maestro Williams – I won’t, for instance, buy Meco’s Star Wars and other Galactic Funk or
Walt Disney Records’ 2018 remastered editions of the original soundtracks (as originally released between 1977 and
2005, without the Special Edition albums) – I do try to get as many of the best
records as I can.
John Williams Conducts
John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy is one of the oldest CDs in my music
collection; I bought it in December of 1990, less than a month after CBS Records/Sony
Classical published it. And for an album that has been handled – with great
care, mind you – and played regularly for almost 28 years, my copy is in decent
shape. The plastic ‘jewel case” packaging is relatively intact; the booklet
with the liner notes has a few tears from failed attempts to put it back in its
place, but it’s still readable. And most important, the CD still plays
flawlessly; it doesn’t have nasty scratches that mar either its playback or
sound quality.
What about the music, you ask?
Well, the album contains what I call the basic Star Wars repertoire, which consists of
the concert arrangements of:
·
Star Wars
(Main Theme)
·
Princess
Leia’s Theme
·
Here They
Come!
·
The
Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)
·
Yoda’s
Theme
·
The Asteroid
Theme
·
Luke and
Leia
·
Parade of
the Ewoks
·
Jabba the
Hutt
·
Forest
Battle
·
Throne
Room and Finale
This is essentially the meat-and-potatoes that make up most Star Wars Trilogy cover albums. For variety’s
sake, most producers will add concert arrangements of other themes from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.
John Williams Conducts
John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy adds two tracks to the core selection,
both from Star Wars. They are:
Track 3: The Little
People, which is the bouncy yet furtive theme for the child-sized Jawas,
the Tatooine desert scavengers that capture Artoo Detoo and See Threepio and
end up selling them to Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen. Derived from Star Wars’ The Dune Sea/Jawa Sandcrawler, the track consists primarily of the
oompah-oompah motif for the Jawas, a clever and amusing theme that evokes their
rodent-like qualities. Only at the tail end does William add a hint of menace,
with a sudden “hit” of the Imperial motif used only in Star Wars (and is not to be confused
with The Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back).
Track 9: The Cantina
Band, the jazz-calypso fusion piece that Williams composed originally for a
small jazz ensemble he put together in 1977 to record the original track for
the Star Wars soundtrack. Here it is
played by members of the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra, with a bit of
synthesizer (programmed and sequenced by Jeff Beal and Greg Sudmeier) added to
give the “Benny Goodman swing piece played underwater” tune an otherworldly
vibe.
John Williams Conducts
John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy is perhaps one of the better Star Wars “cover” albums, and not just
because the composer himself conducts the music. The record is a testament to George
Lucas’s commitment to quality, as well as his deep understanding of the
relationship of music and the images he creates on screen. This is surely great
music that not only stands the test of time, but can be enjoyed on its own
artistic merits.
Truly, the Force is with
John Williams Conducts John Williams: The Star Wars Trilogy. I strongly
recommend it.
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