A John Williams Celebration Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

A John Williams Celebration Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 1, 2015

It may strike some of you younger whippersnappers out there as a mere legend, but as someone who was there at the time, I can tell you television shows used to have actual themes. As a fledgling musician, one of the principal pleasures of my youth was enjoying the incredible music that graced episodic television back in the veritable Dark Ages, and one of the first names I learned to recognize and revere was Johnny Williams. That’s right—Johnny. That diminutive first name couldn’t mask the titanic talent that provided some of television’s most memorable theme music, whether in the third stream jazz leanings of Kraft Suspense Theater or the more whimsical proclivities of science fiction fare like Land of the Giants or Lost in Space (and I am one of those inveterate music geeks who can hum both themes Williams wrote for the Irwin Allen Space Family Robinson enterprise). Probably at least partially due to my admittedly geeky fascination with television music and its composers, I always sat up and took notice when I’d see one of the names I recognized from tv like Dave Grusin or Jerry Fielding or, yes, Johnny (still Johnny in those early years) Williams dance across the big screen credits sequences, and I still remember for example seeing Fitzwilly (a relatively early Williams feature film score) and then running home to try to figure out the changes for its song, the wonderful “Make Me Rainbows,” at the piano. I may have had a bit of a “head start” on the general listening public when it came to Williams’ music, but by the early seventies at least, an increasing number of people started sitting up and paying attention to both Williams’ original scores and (especially in the early seventies) his orchestrations and arrangements for such musicals as Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Fiddler on the Roof.

Though he had already had literally decades of work on both the small and large screens by the time Jaws appeared in 1975 (and despite having won an Oscar for his work on the aforementioned Fiddler on the Roof), it was probably the Steven Spielberg shark opus that finally brought Williams widespread recognition by the general public, even those who (unlike me) probably couldn’t care less who composed what for any given film. When Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope appeared in 1977 and Williams’ towering theme shot to the top of the charts, his status as Hollywood composing royalty was assured.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, probably one of the few civic orchestras in the United States which doesn’t have to fret about its bottom line, has had a long and lucrative interaction with Williams, and certainly knows which side of its figurative bread is buttered, having decided to kick off its 2014-15 season with this “celebration” of a relatively narrow but still enjoyable eclectic sampling of Williams’ music, mostly drawn from his film scores. That “narrow” descriptor may strike some as incomprehensible given the wide gamut of genres and styles on display in this concert, but for anyone who has taken the time to really explore Williams’ unbelievably accomplished oeuvre, it will perhaps be at least a little more understandable.

The U.S. Army Herald Trumpets get things off to a boisterous start with Williams’ exciting Olympic Fanfare and Theme. The Philharmonic’s music director Gustavo Dudamel then leads the orchestra in the only so-called “legitimate” piece on the program, Soundings, Williams’ expansive tone poem which was commissioned to inaugurate Walt Disney Concert Hall in October 2003. Soundings offers a really interesting combination of ideas that are meant to exploit the acoustics of Disney Hall, and Williams works both in finely woven smaller textures as well as some larger “slabs” of sound that recall avant-garde composers like Edgard Varèse.

The rest of the concert is culled either from Williams’ original compositions for films or his adaptations of others’ music. Itzhak Perlman offers a gorgeously heartfelt tour through some of the elegiac music from Schindler's List, before moving on to decidedly more ebullient fare from Fiddler on the Roof that once challenged Isaac Stern.

Williams’ jazzier proclivities are on display in a selection of themes from Catch Me If You Can, featuring soloists Dan Higgins on alto sax, Glenn Paulson on vibraphone and Michael Valerio on upright bass. A two-fer from Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope follows, putatively bringing the concert to a close (yeah, right).

Some of the best material is actually “appended” to the concert as a veritable coda, with a wonderful performance of “Dry Your Tears, Africa” from Amistad featuring the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, which is then followed by a snippet from Jaws. Williams takes the stage to usher in the rousing finale, the “Imperial March” from Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back.

A John Williams Celebration Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A John Williams Celebration is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of C Major with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This is the second Blu-ray release distributed by Naxos which I've reviewed recently which experiences at least transitory issues with video noise, though in this case it's decidedly more transitory (meaning less problematic) than what was seen with fair regularity on Show Boat. Most of these issues tend to crop up in darker moments (see screenshot 8 for one of the worst examples), with the bulk of the presentation not suffering overly from distracting swarms of pixels. More brightly lit moments offer very good clarity and an accurate reproduction of colors. There are also occasional very slight combing artifacts in elements like quickly moving bows and the like.

A John Williams Celebration Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A John Williams Presentation features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround mix and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo mix, both of which offer excellent clarity and precision. The 5.1 mix offers better support for mid- to lower end frequencies, helping to augment some of Williams' massed deeper brass voicings. Perlman's crystalline violin sounds brilliant without ever passing over into brittle territory. There's a nice spaciousness to the 5.1 iteration, and dynamic range is extremely wide.

A John Williams Celebration Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Conversations:

  Gustavo Dudamel and John Williams (1080i; 13:44)

  Itzhak Perlman (1080i; 3:43)

A John Williams Celebration Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A John Williams Celebration is a bit on the mainstream side, offering a "mix tape" of sorts that makes sure to touch on some of Williams' best known themes. Some may have hoped for a bit broader display of Williams' equally brilliant "pure" orchestral offerings, but this is a high energy and nicely emotional concert that will certainly delight rank and file Williams fans who may not care all that much about his more classical side. There are some passing issues with video quality here, but otherwise A John Williams Celebration comes Recommended.