As with the Sony set the arrangers are credited on each piece. You see names like Angela Morley and Alexander Courage appear frequently. Williams did a few as well.
Oh yes, that passed me by. Not all of the songs have arranger credits, which would lead me to believe those were played as originally arranged. With the arrangers, I wonder how much of it was done FOR Williams' preference and creative approach vs. the arranger's?
On the Sony set, "The Hollywood Sound" varies:
"Lawrence of Arabia" overture - no arranger (as-is from Jarre's composition?) "Jaws" theme - no arranger (as-is from Williams' final composition?) "Beauty and the Beast" arranged by Michael Starobin "The Best Years of Our Lives" arranged by Angela Morley
My ultimate question is how much of this contains the voice and/or character of Williams beyond the tempo and dynamics direction, barring the obvious fact that the majority of the songs weren't Williams' compositions.
I'm certain Williams had an impact on the arrangements though to what extent I don't know. He had good instincts for delivering music that audiences and orchestra managers liked. According to the recent Williams biography the Pops wanted him both for his star power and for his connections to skilled Hollywood arrangers to freshen up the (then) rather stale catalog of Pops standards.
If your are ordering this in the U.K., best price I found was from Decca . £49.99 You can get 10% discount by using Code - DECCA10 (£44.99 plus postage).
Hope that helps
Aargh. I didn’t see that discount. Anyways it’s on its way now. And yes, the price is great at DECCA.
If your are ordering this in the U.K., best price I found was from Decca . £49.99 You can get 10% discount by using Code - DECCA10 (£44.99 plus postage).
Hope that helps
Aargh. I didn’t see that discount. Anyways it’s on its way now. And yes, the price is great at DECCA.
Though I have ordered mine through another retailer, the set at DECCA UK seems to be sold out.
Most of the cover art can be found by doing a Google image search and including the name of the album and "Spotify". Spotify has most of the available classical album art at 640x640. However, Decca (which now owns the Philips Classics catalogue) has removed the Philips branding from the digital artwork. If there are any you're unable to locate that way I can post them here.
If your are ordering this in the U.K., best price I found was from Decca . £49.99 You can get 10% discount by using Code - DECCA10 (£44.99 plus postage).
Hope that helps
Aargh. I didn’t see that discount. Anyways it’s on its way now. And yes, the price is great at DECCA.
Though I have ordered mine through another retailer, the set at DECCA UK seems to be sold out.
Showing in stock again…. They also stock the upcoming Williams Berlin releases, which you could also claim the discount on.
Most of the cover art can be found by doing a Google image search and including the name of the album and "Spotify". Spotify has most of the available classical album art at 640x640. However, Decca (which now owns the Philips Classics catalogue) has removed the Philips branding from the digital artwork. If there are any you're unable to locate that way I can post them here.
User JGouse0498 has recreated the Philips Digital Classics branding in high quality, so one could conceivably take those covers and paste the banner in.
I’d like to point out a few highlights from Decca’s John Williams and the Boston Pops box set that will be of interest to film music fans:
Gershwin: Porgy And Bess Suite (arr. Robert Russell Bennett and Alexander Courage) Whiting: Hooray for Hollywood (arr John Williams) Pops Salutes The Oscars (arr Morton Stevens) Raksin: The Bad And The Beautiful (arr Herbert Spencer) North: Unchained Melody (arr Lee Holdridge) Steiner: A Summer Place (arr Lee Holdridge) Love Is A Many Splendored Thing (arr Angela Morley) Courage: Star Trek Theme (arr Alexander Courage) Phillips: Battlestar Galactica (arr Stu Phillips) Constant: Twilight Zone Theme And Variations (arr Stu Phillips) Steiner: Tara’s Theme (arr Angela Morley) Arlen: Over The Rainbow (arr Alexander Courage) Brown: Singin In The Rain (arr Conrad Salinger & Alexander Courage) Tiomkin: Friendly Persuasion (arr Angela Morley) The Trolley Song (arr Conrad Salinger & Alexander Courage)
All the Williams compositions are his own arrangements.
Jesus Christ. What an ass and what a daft "review".
This guy might know his stuff but is this seriously a review or just a guy reading track names on albums that clearly he hasn't listened to? I mean, all he is doing is criticizing the timings of pieces and has no additional arguments based on listening to support his claim that Williams isn't a charismatic conductor. BTW, picking on The Planets alone doesn't support the argument. Every conductor has their off days... every single one! And then after each album, he has to either undermine pops recordings or film music as a whole. Oh, and don't you just love it when he thinks he's singing "The Mission Theme" but sings "Meet The Press" instead? This clown hasn't listened to any of these recordings. How can you review a set and criticize a conductor WITHOUT listening? Yes, what an ass!
Agreed. The “Pops In Love” album that Hurwitz dismissed is actually very good. It’s an unfortunate title for an interesting collection of popular melodic classical music all well performed and in spectacular sound. It’s not a collection of music for romance at all.
Williams’ interpretation of The Planets is certainly not the best out there (Karajan, Ozawa, Steinberg are all better choices) but it’s no disaster like Herrmann’s.
User JGouse0498 has recreated the Philips Digital Classics branding in high quality, so one could conceivably take those covers and paste the banner in.
I'll do you one better. Here's the HQ recreation banner on its own. It's sized for a 1600x1600 pixel image, and it will save people the trouble of having to extract it off the other cover.
Jesus Christ. What an ass and what a daft "review".
This guy might know his stuff but is this seriously a review or just a guy reading track names on albums that clearly he hasn't listened to? I mean, all he is doing is criticizing the timings of pieces and has no additional arguments based on listening to support his claim that Williams isn't a charismatic conductor. BTW, picking on The Planets alone doesn't support the argument. Every conductor has their off days... every single one! And then after each album, he has to either undermine pops recordings or film music as a whole. Oh, and don't you just love it when he thinks he's singing "The Mission Theme" but sings "Meet The Press" instead? This clown hasn't listened to any of these recordings. How can you review a set and criticize a conductor WITHOUT listening? Yes, what an ass!
-Erik-
Oh well, to each his or her own. He DOES say that Williams is a genius as a composer and greatly admires his own film music conducting. And he doesn’t deny that some of the recordings in the review are perfectly fine .....
Oh well, to each his or her own. He DOES say that Williams is a genius as a composer and greatly admires his own film music conducting. And he doesn’t deny that some of the recordings in the review are perfectly fine .....
He can hate on John Williams for all I care but as a reviewer, he should have actually LISTENED to the stuff before making this video and have something interesting to say about them instead of reading tracklistings, which to me at least, seemed rather foreign to a guy who should have already been familiar with the CD programs. His "perfectly fine" comments were backhanded comments about the CD program... not the recording, the pieces themselves, the performance or the conducting. This guy got the box as a promo, ten minutes later went on camera, read off the tracklisting pretending to have heard the set... insulting film music and pops recording while doing so... and called it a day. Brutal!
I kind of feel bad for him. He just seems like an older man who is just trying to make a living - I’d rather he be doing it than a snarky Gen-Zer. I can develop my own opinions.
I have to say, I just saw footage of Williams conducting the opening of the 1984 Olympics and while I thought it was a bit fast, it was still invigorating. He looked so young and almost nervous! I just appreciate everything Williams does, there’s always something to learn.
To thank the poster for alerting me to the DECCA discount code and cheap price on their website - here's a link to all the CD artwork that I scanned in this morning
