Music Album Review: 'Schindler's List: 25th Anniversary Edition Soundtrack'

"Steven and I began, as we always did. by screening his finished cut of the film. And, at the end, the lights came up, and it was time for us to begin talking about the role of music in the film. But I was so overwhelmed by what I'd just seen, I really couldn't speak. So I excused myself and walked around the building for a few minutes to gather myself, and then came back to resume the meeting. And I said to him quite seriously, 'Steven, you really need a better composer than I am for this film.' And he said, very sweetly, 'I know. But they're all dead.'" - John Williams

On December 3, 2018, almost a quarter century after MCA Records released the original 14-track soundtrack from director Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List, Burbank-based La-La Land Records began to ship a limited edition 2-CD reissue titled Schindler's List: 25th Anniversary Soundtrack. Produced, edited, and remastered by Michael "Mike" Matessino and personally vetted by Maestro John Williams and Spielberg, this Silver Anniversary recording features performances by violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Li-Ron Herzeliya Children's Choir of Tel Aviv, the Ramat Gan Chamber Choir of Tel Aviv, and clarinetist Giora Feidman.

"When I directed Schindler's List 25 years ago, my greatest hope for the film was that it would speak to audiences, to continue our conversation and advance our determination to prove that love is stronger than hate. I continue to hope for this today." - Steven Spielberg

La-La Land's soundtrack expert and restorer Mike Matessino, in collaboration with Geffen Records and Universal City Studios, decided to honor the memory of the Shoah and the 25th Anniversary of Schindler's List not by presenting all of the music heard in the three-hour film. Instead, Schindler's List: 25th Anniversary Edition Soundtrack is a slightly expanded version of the 1993 MCA album that consists of the following discs:

• Disc 1: Schindler's List: Original 1993 Soundtrack Album (Remastered)
• Disc 2: Outtakes Alternate and Film Version of Cues for Schindler's List

Per La-La Land's product description:

Disc One of this special 2-CD presentation showcases the original soundtrack assembly, sourced from the original 1993 release’s 24-karat gold Ultimate Masterdisc digital master, while Disc Two contains previously unreleased tracks, sourced from engineer Shawn Murphy’s stereo digital masters, including two major cues that are now presented in the versions heard in the picture: “Schindler’s Workforce” and “I Could Have Done More,” both of which underwent revisions after the 1993 album had been prepared. 

This 25th Anniversary Edition, produced, edited and mastered by Mike Matessino, is approved by composer John Williams and director Steven Spielberg. It is limited to 4000 units and features classic art design by Jim Titus and exclusive, in-depth liner notes by Matessino.

© 1993, 2018 La-La Land Records, Universal City Studios, Amblin Entertainment, and Geffen Records

TRACK LISTING:

DISC 1 • The Original Soundtrack Album

1. Theme from Schindler’s List * 4:16 

2. Jewish Town [Krakow Ghetto – Winter ’41] * 4:40 

3. Immolation [With Our Lives, We Give Life] 4:44 

4. Remembrances 4:20 

5. Schindler’s Workforce 9:08 

6. OYF’N Pripetshok *** and Nacht Aktion ** 2:56 

7. I Could Have Done More * 5:52

8. Auschwitz-Birkenau * 3:41

9. Stolen Memories 4:20 

10. Making the List 5:11 

11. Give Me Your Names 4:55 

12. Yeroushalaim Chel Zahav [Jerusalem Of Gold] 2:17 

13. Remembrances [with Itzhak Perlman] * 5:16

14. Theme from Schindler’s List [Reprise] 3:00 

Total Disc 1 Time: 64:39

DISC 2 • Additional Music from Schindler’s List

1. Schindler's Workforce (Film Version) 12:09 

2. Reflections 2:42 

3. Theme For Recorder 2:15

4. Remembrances (Alternate) 4:31 

5. The Perlman Family 1:15 

6. I Could Have Done More (Film Version) * 5:56 

Total: 28:50 

Total Two-Disc Time: 93:29   

* Violin Solos by Itzhak Perlman accompanied by members of The Boston Symphony Orchestra 

** Clarinet solos performed by Giora Feidman 

***OYF’N Pripetshok; Composed by Mark Warshawsky.  Performed by The Li-Ron Herzeliya Children’s Choir, Tel-Aviv, Israel. Conducted by Ronit Shapira

My Take

"With dignity and compassion, John Williams composed one of his greatest scores for Schindler's List in a collection of themes and orchestral remembrances that will haunt you. The inhumane events beginning with Kristallnacht (1938) to the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau (1944) posed a deliberate challenge for John and me.

"Most of our films together have required an almost operatic accompaniment, which is fitting for Indiana Jones, Close Encounters, or Jaws, but each of us had to depart from our characteristic styles to honor this story of the Shoah." - director Steven Spielberg's liner notes

I first heard John Williams' score for Schindler's List in February of 1994 when Steven Spielberg's now-classic adaptation of Thomas Keneally's nonfiction novel Schindler's Ark was in wide release in Miami, Florida. The film had already been on limited release in New York, Los Angeles, and other far-off cities since December of 1993 in order to qualify for that year's Academy Awards consideration, so when I saw it with my best friends, Betsy Matteis and Richard de la Pena, it had already earned 12 Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Original Score (John Williams), Best Actor (Liam Neeson), Best Supporting Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best Adapted Screenplay (Steven Zaillian), Best Film Editing (Michael Kahn), and Best Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski). The film won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and Maestro Williams walked away with his fifth golden statuette for Best Original Score.

Like most fans of the Spielberg-Williams collaboration, I was blown away by how beautiful and elegantly simple Maestro Williams' score is. Schindler's List is a three-hour movie that, like its 1998 D-Day bookend Saving Private Ryan, doesn't have a lot of musical score to support the often stark and violent imagery we see on the screen. Per Mike Montessino's liner notes to the 25th Anniversary Soundtrack, "there are only 51 minutes of underscore in Schindler's List, with the first cue appearing 17 minutes into the film and nearly two-thirds of the score occurring during the last hour. 

In Schindler's List, Williams features two main themes. Matessino recalls an interview with Williams that appeared in Cantina Band 25 years ago:

"The first one I wrote was 'Remembrances.'  I was going to stop there because I thought that would be enough thematic identification for the film, but I realized that it wasn't going to satisfy every requirement. It needed a slightly different flavor for some of the sequences, so I set about writing a completely different kind of melody, but in the same style, which we now know as the 'Theme from Schindler's List.'"

Williams' mission – to compose a score that evoked the rich cultural heritage of Eastern Europe's decimated Jewish communities – was daunting, but the composer was perfectly suited for the assignment. Not only did he understand that his score would feature violin solos because traditionally the violin is the "Jewish national instrument" due to its portability; in addition, Williams had won his first Oscar for adapting Jerry Bock's music for Norman Jewison's film version of Fiddler on the Roof (1971). That earlier work, which featured violin solos by the late Isaac Stern, paved the way for Williams' original but culturally accurate themes and cues, including Jewish Town [Krakow Ghetto – Winter ’41] and  Give Me Your Names.

Matessino, who has restored many of John Williams' scores for RCA Victor and other labels, including La-La Land Records, for over two decades, has done a magnificent job with this 25th Anniversary Limited Edition (only 4,000 units were made). He keeps things appropriately simple and doesn't try to cram every piece of music used in the movie. (In addition to the music in the soundtrack album, which includes two traditional Jewish choral pieces written by other composers, source music - that is, music and songs that the characters hear "in-universe"- was used to good effect in Schindler's List. Some of the most famous compositions that are heard in the film but not in the soundtrack album include the Gardel-Le Pera tango Por una cabeza and Bach's English Suite No. 2.) 

Instead, we get a beautifully remastered version of the 1993 MCA album, along with a second disc with a combination of cues that were recorded for the film after the soundtrack album had already been completed at Todd-AO Scoring in Studio City, CA, or an alternate version of Remembrances.   With a running time of 28:50, the second disc expands the total album content to a still-lean but elegant  93:29  minutes' worth of music. 

As Schindler's List director Steven Spielberg writes in his notes to the soundtrack album, "This is certainly an album to be absorbed with closed eyes and unsequestered hearts."