GerateWohl
Forumsvar Lagt Inn
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Innlegg
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I have to be more precise. I didn’t have most of the albums already. I just had the Yo-Yo Ma cello Album, the five sacred trees, an american journey and some of the recordings of Williams composition on the other Sony boxset, which covers about 90% of the actual Williams pieces of the box. But I didn’t have any of the Boston Pops albums. And I didn’t have the Star Wars album as well. So, it wasn’t just for the shelf but a lot more music to explore.
The Tokyo box was a black friday sale for around 16 Euro if I remember correctly. And I am quite happy with it. The ET suite is great.
Hana-Bi was my first Hisaishi score. Mononoke was second. I love both, but Hana-Bi is somehow more special to me.
At a certain point I lost track of what he did. I never was a super fan.
Micht have to do with the fact, that I also was struggling with Tim Burton’s style in his movies. I never really like his kind of kitsch, that was disguised as some kind of quirk, but in the end it was just kitsch.
Yes, I liked Elfman’s Edward score and Beetlejuice a bit. Batman Returns and Nichtmare Before Christmas I enjoyed for some time. And very much so Sleepy Hollow. And there was a time, when I listened to his Mission Impossible score a lot. Then my attention was caught again by his Spiderman score.However, what really enflamed me for Elfman’s music was his violin concerto Eleven Eleven. To date I rather like his concert works. Serenada Schizophrana, the ballet Rabbit and Rogue or his percussion concerto. From there I again payed more attention to some of his filmwork and found treasures like Terminator Salvation, Red Dragon and Alice in Wonderland. But there is a very lot that I don’t care for. Sometimes I am even annoyed by his style. It comes and goes.
But I can almost always enjoy his concert work.No, but I was primarily interested in all the stuff composed by Williams. And there I was more or less complete. But I then enjoyed some of the other records as well like the Gershwin album or the cinema serenade albums.
By the way, of course I am not going to buy the new SONY Anthology Vol. 1 of John Williams. And probably also not the other two upcoming volumes.
Because I guess, I already have everything they contain.For a long time I was very hesitant to get the SONY Conductor box because I basically already owned everything from it that I was really interested in. But then it became so cheap, that I couldn’t resist. And it actually contained some nice things, that I didn’t own before.
I made a photograph of just my John Williams boxsets. But I cannot upload pictures here. So just in words.
I have these John Williams boxsets
The Phillips Conductor Boxset
SONY Conductor Boxset
SONY John Williams – The Great Movie Soundtracks (4-discs)
The Legend of John Williams (20 discs)
Desaster Movie Box (4 discs)
Harry Potter – The John Williams Scores (7 discs)
Indiana Jones Concord Boxset (5 discs)
Star Wars Trilogy – The Anthology Boxset (4 discs)
John Williams in Berlin (2 CDs, 1 BluRay)
John Williams in Tokio (2 CDs, 1 BluRay)
Across The Stars (1 CD, 1 DVD)Apart from that I have the Bernard Herrmann phase-4 boxset and the Planet of the Apes boxset. And the 12-disc Charles Gerhardt boxset.
But I think, that’s it for soundtrack related boxsets.
Edit: Oh wait, no! I almost forgot my two lovely Ennio Morricone Ecoutez Le Cinema boxsets. And my 6-disc Philippe Sarde Anthology boxset. All wonderful boxsets.
Thank you for the easrecommendations.
As you can see in my top 10 in the other thread I mainly aim for symphonic or melodic film scores.Both areas where I would claim, Zimmer is not good at.
And obviously he doesn’t have to be. People are hiring him for something else.And Hans Zimmer usually works in styles which are either completely outside my taste or where I prefer respective excesses from original pop or rock artists. Just like some fans of orchestral music might prefer Stravinsky or Elgar over John Williams.
Basically it is about the music itself. The fact, that it is used in film is secondary. Still that leads often to weird musical comparrisons between composers like Hans Zimmer and John Williams which make musically as much sense as comparing Metallica to Prokofiev. Of course it is possible to compare both musically.
But the argumentation why I should like Metallica when I like Prokofiev might be vastly difficult.Of course these lists are quite fluid. But currently I would go with this list.
The Empire Strikes Back- John Williams
E.T. – John Williams
Raiders of the Lost Ark – John Williams
The Force Awakens – John Williams
Unbreakable – James Newton Howard
Hana-Bi – Joe Hisaishi
The Magnificient Seven – Elmer Bernstein
Quo Vadis – Miklós Rózsa
El Cid – Miklós Rózsa
Tess – Philippe SardeI live in Berlin and didn’t even try to get a ticket. Somehow I didn’t believe it’s gonna happen.
And Johnny and I had our moment at the last Berlin concert. That was magical.
I mean, I was there in the audience and he conducted. That was enough for.me.Maybe some explanation might help. What I am absolutely NOT interested in are atmospheric synth scores with meandering or droning low string imitation sounds like Zimmer’s Black Rain, the first time where I recognized his name. The only composer where I am really buying that is John Carpenter. And that not for musical reasons but because that’s an immanent part of his art and style of filmmaking.
I am also not a fan of the scores of Harold Faltermayer or Giorgio Moroder or David Foster.And I might have to differentiate. There is a difference for me between a score, that I find ok in context or what I like musically enough to want to listen to it out of context.
First album of Zimmer, that I heard was Hannibal and I didn’t like it at all. And I really liked Silence of the Lambs.
Often Zimmer creates score that I find ok in context but create zero aim to listen to this elsewhere.
And he like, like Göransson, a composer, where I sometimes even in context think, what crap is that.
I have no doubt, that Zimmer has some scores on a level of scores of other composers that I like good enough on album. Recently I listened to Revell’s The Crow and thought, this could also be by Zimmer. But it is also a score I rather.connect to not because it matches.my musical taste, but because I have a nostalgic connection to it.
Often, what really hurts my ear how he treats the orchestra.
Basically I could bring it to the formula:
I am interested in
melodies
textures
polyphony
variation and modulation
and originality and memorability in these areasWhat I recognized what I mainly get from Zimmer is
repeating chord sequences
original sound design
ethnic coloring
souvereign electronic sequencing
pop and rock sprinklesAnd surely some more.
All that is for sure objectivity not bad. But in its scope and limitation not my cup of tea.
Sometimes a piece of his starts of with the chords like a song and then you wait for either the song lyrics and.melody to start or a solo instrument starting the theme. But nothing else happens. It’s just that sequence. Time from Inception is such an example.
I am afraid, all that mumbling might not help you to chose any recommendations?
One more thing: A score that I found somewhat ok for listening was The Dark Knight. But I am not sure, if that rather goes to the account of James Newton Howard.
Regarding composers that I dislikedand now like, I am still waiting for the day when I will like the music of Hans Zimmer. Maybe this will be my final scream on my deathbed. “Oh Hans!” But currently unlikely.
There are some, like Bear McCreary, that I didn’t care for before Rings of Power. And I still don’t have a huge interest in his other work.
There are some where I have an on/off relationship like Danny Elfman.
Then there are some who make it quite easy to fall in love with if you encounter them with the right scores like John Williams, John Barry, Miklós Rózsa or Elmer Bernstein, Joe Hisaishi.
But apart from Williams all of these also did stuff that I really don’t like.
