Tone Poem Tuesday

One problem with taking a three-day weekend, with Monday as the third day, is that when I go back to work, my brain goes, “Yup, it’s Monday!”, and then only once we get close to dinner time does my brain go, “Oh shit, it’s Tone Poem Tuesday!”

But here we go.

Back in 1977, when Star Wars was sweeping across the world, it was generally unheard of for film music to be performed in concert by major orchestras. Of course, nowadays not only has film music found acceptance in the concert hall, but orchestras are finding major sources in revenue by literally performing entire filmscores as the movie projects above their heads. We live in amazing times…but in 1977, John Williams’s score to Star Wars was rewriting the rule books, and conductor Zubin Mehta came to record an album of selections from the Star Wars score, along with a suite from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. I wouldn’t discover this album’s existence until years later while I was digging through the classical section of some record store, but the album turns out to have been very highly regarded as a re-recording of movie music by a major orchestra. It was even nominated for a Grammy Award!

Film music is often edited into suites for more easy concert listening, as the individual tracks don’t always make for the most compelling listening on their own. The suite from Close Encounters that appeared on that album is probably the best representation of that film’s music other than the actual OST album. The performance is electrifying, and it thrillingly captures the logic of John Williams’s score structure even as it presents only about twelve minutes of the film’s music.

Here is the Suite from Close Encounters of the Third Kind by John Williams, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

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