Shaham's new John Williams recording

[lwl]

Gil Shaham's latest recording is now out. He plays music by John Williams -- the violin concerto, a work called "Treesong", and the three pieces from Schindler's List.

It's certainly very interesting to hear Shaham play the Schindler's List pieces, as this work was written for Perlman and anyone who's ever seen the movie or heard the score probably has Perlman's way of playing it indelibly etched in their brain. Shaham is the most Perlman-esque of the younger generation, in my opinion, and it sounds good in his hands, though distinctly different from Perlman.

I have the extant Mark Peskanov recording of the concerto, and while Shaham is a better advocate for it than he is (at least in my opinion), I still fail to like it. (Williams also revised the work since that recording; I don't know the recordings well enough yet to tell how much was changed and how much of my impression of "better" is composer's changes vs. the players.)

I haven't yet formed an impression of Treesong; it's not easy listening, in my opinion, and is going to take quite a few hearings before I can really make a judgement on it. It was written for Shaham, and it's well-played -- but Joshua Bell, for instance, did a splendid job playing Nicholas Maw's violin concerto, and I still don't like that work.

Williams is capable of accessible, melodic writing, as he so clearly demonstrates in his film music. Why he chooses these atonal idioms for his classical composition is something I simply don't understand. Why not a concert work for violin in the vein of Schindler's List, or the fiddle solos of The Patriot, or the virtuosic writing for The Witches of the Eastwick (also transformed into a fairly effective concert piece for Gil Shaham)?

Any other opinions?

[Violinflu]

I agree totally. I listened to the complete cd at a store down the street, and I kept wondering why Williams chose to write in such a style... The CD liner actually hinted that Treesong was somewhat impressionistic, but listening to it, it sounded like wandering around in the dark. The violin concerto was not appreciably different. Williams is one of the best composers of the past century, but he should stick with what works, IMHO.

Shaham plays competently, but not as charismatically as in his other recordings. I suspect he doesn't have a great affinity for the pieces.

If you want to hear some Great Williams, check out the soundtrack to The Phantom Menace. One of his most complicated, highest quality soundtracks, unfortunately attached to one of the worst movies...

Jesse

[Zoe]

I've had this CD for about three and a half months now and I still can't say that I like the music much. It has become slightly more attractive after I've listened to it quite a bit but when I first heard it I didn't like it at all.

As for Gil Shaham's playing, I find it superb as always and the music from Schindler's List, while very different from Perlman's rendition (which is a lot faster) is absolute perfection. I think he does a terrific job over all and the CD itself is beautifully packaged. My copy is autographed by Gil as well.

[lwl]

quote:

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Originally posted by Violinflu:

If you want to hear some Great Williams, check out the soundtrack to The Phantom Menace. One of his most complicated, highest quality soundtracks, unfortunately attached to one of the worst movies...

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I like this soundtrack, but I don't consider it amongst his best. (I am a huge fan of Williams and, indeed, film score composers in general.) I don't think it's on par with the original Star Wars trilogy, in fact -- particularly compared to the quality of The Empire Strikes Back.

As I think about this more, I think Williams exploits the melodic possibilities of the instrument extremely well. What he does not seem to be able to do is to blend virtuosic development with that keen sense of melody -- I think this weakness is even apparent in the extension of The Witches of Eastwick, for instance. Once he moves away from writing music that's effective for a scene, towards music purely effective for the instrument, he seems to falter.

[Violinflu]

Really? Do you have the soundtrack? If you do, listen carefully to Anakin's theme, and remember that the cute kid will become Darth Vader. Notice how Williams foreshadows this with a snippet of Vader's theme at the end of Anakin's - already a beautiful, optimistic, but very complicated melody, and when Vader comes in at the end, I get goosebumps every time.

This is only one example of how I think John Williams understood the movie and its characters better than even George Lucas!

Of course, I love his stuff in the originals, and practically everything else he has written. One of the grad students living on my floor considers John Williams to be his favorite composer, period. I'm glad to see that you, too, are a fan of the often-underappreciated movie composer :-)

Jesse

[lwl]

Don't get me wrong -- I think the Phantom Menace is an excellent score. But I don't think it ranks among Williams' very best work.

I do have this score, along with practically everything else Williams has written and that I've been able to get my hands on. Too much money spent on ebay.