John Williams Stuff
News by Lukas Kendall
Over the Moon is a new book about John Williams -- kind of a
dossier of his life and work -- from Chile, so it's in Spanish. The author
is Roberto Aschieri. Here are websites with information:
Spanish: www.megachile.com/overthemoon
English: www.johnwilliams.cjb.net
On another subject, John Williams's Clarinet Concerto, here's a question
I got from a reader as to a recording of the classical work (not otherwise
available) circulating on the Internet:
From: al_foster@t-online.de (Al Foster)
I asked Williams expert and webmaster Jeff Eldridge and here is his
informed reply:
Last week, David Blumberg, the producer of a CD featuring a recording
of John Williams' clarinet concerto, posted on eBay, offering to sell 10
copies of the recording for $1000 (!) each. He made it clear he was going
to be selling them at $10 each in the near future, so this was just for
the privilege of having one of the "first 10 copies", which would
be autographed by the soloist, Michele Zukovsky. Not suprisingly, no one
bothered to bid.
(See http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=321387494
for details of the eBay auction.)
While mp3.com is advertising it as a CD, it is actually a CD-R.
There is no mention of the orchestra performing the concerto, although
it says that the performance is conducted by John Williams. It is a live
recording. (The only documented performance of the work I have discovered
was the April 1991 premiere by the Riverside County Philharmonic under
the direction of Williams.) The CD-R also includes a performance of Carl
Maria von Weber's Concertino for clarinet and orchestra, Op. 26, with the
LA Phil under the direction of Zubin Mehta.
The CD-R sounds OK, but not like a professionally-produced, high-quality
digitial recording. However, since this is the first and only opportunity
most anyone has had to hear the clarinet concerto, it's more than adequate.
While the piece isn't as profound as Williams' violin and bassoon concertos,
it is nevertheless quite enjoyable.
The CD-R contains some CD-ROM files in additional to the regular
CD audio, but this mostly consists of *.mp3 files (of the same music on
the CD-audio portion) and some very brief, not terribly informative notes
about the music.
So there you have it. We're back tomorrow with a backlogged Film Score
Friday of news and information.
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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