: (John
Williams) If ever there was a film both defined and confined by the
weight of its own immense advance hype, it would be this initial
adaptation of J.K. Rowling's famous series of "Harry Potter" stories to
the screen in 2001. Much thought was placed in the translation of
into live action reality
because a franchise of films was inevitable to follow, with the cast and
crew carefully chosen and approved by Warner Brothers to avoid any
chance of fumbling an obvious series of blockbuster earnings to result.
The early films in franchise, directed by Chris Columbus, had the
benefit of utilizing comparatively optimistic stories that could fit
well into the length of one motion picture, and
, as it's known internationally) is popularly and critically
considered by many to be the best entry in the franchise. By the fourth
film's release by Warner several years later, much of the original crew
(and deceased actor Richard Harris, of course) was no longer attached to
the concept, and the quality of the films' haphazard adaptations of the
longer stories diminished their appeal. One of the elements strongly
favoring the first three films is the music by veteran franchise
composer John Williams, who not only was the perfect choice for the
assignment (despite rumors that James Horner had been offered the job)
but whose themes for the world of wizardry would become yet another
identity engrained for audiences of each successive film. Unfortunately,
as the franchise began to rotate crews for its later entries, the
thematic and stylistic identity so thoroughly cemented by Williams for
was largely lost by Patrick
Doyle and Nicholas Hooper. Thus, in retrospect, the first score for the
series has been increased in status through the years as subsequent
composers have failed to uphold, despite considerable quality in parts
of their own endeavors, the integrity established by Williams.
to the highest of regards
is owed in part to the continued presence of the maestro's themes for
the concept in even the
franchise and not simply due to the inconsistent scores to follow the
three by Williams for the "Harry Potter" franchise. There was also a
daunting set of circumstances facing the original entry in 2001. The
hype machine for the film and its music was tremendous, but even
Warner's efforts to push the production's advertising to the limits of
tolerance couldn't ultimately overshadow the overwhelming quality and
consequent attention pulled towards Peter Jackson's concurrently
released
, which
featured a stunning score by Howard Shore that took home an Academy
Award that year. No amount of effort by Williams could compete with the
once-in-a-lifetime kind of trilogy of scores that Shore composed for
J.R.R. Tolkien's world, proving that timing was not on the maestro's
side. Williams made the best of the situation, though. He had faced
similarly lofty expectations in the year before
and had delivered a fantastic result. One comforting
factor regarding
for
Williams was the chance to reunite once again with Columbus. His career
in the early 2000's consisted mostly of projects for directors with whom
he had already collaborated successfully, and the opportunity to be
involved with the magic of this particular franchise led to the expected
fantasy children's score of epic length and proportion. His work started
early, too. The film represented the first time since 1991's
that Williams had composed a theme specifically meant for the theatrical
trailers of the film. (The impressive
prelude, as heard
first on its original album, made its debut in the film's trailer at the
beginning of 1989's
). Through
these trailers and a much discussed concert performance of the trailer's
music, Williams offered eager audiences a glimpse of the wondrous
fantasy score to come.
, Williams
departed from his usual practices and had actually taken the time to
read Rowling's book prior to being involved with the project, and he
confessed to enjoying it with his family. Upon seeing rough edits of the
film in the spring of 2001, Williams was impressed even further.
Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts later in that summer,
Williams was unable to secure the services of the London Symphony
Orchestra for this score, though other suitable London performers (along
with the London Voices choir) were collected for the occasion. Williams'
enthusiasm for this project was evident in the words he stated early
about the score in concerts and interviews. In a May 18th, 2001, article
in the Boston Globe, Williams discussed the "darkly alluring orchestral
waltz" that he wrote for the first trailer. "I developed a theme for
Hedwig," Williams said. "Everyone seemed to like it, so I will probably
use that music as one thread in the tapestry." Regarding the length of
the score, Williams stated, "I imagine there will be a lot of music in
the film, and Chris Columbus has told me that the film is long and that
he needs to whittle it down. That's a very hard and heartbreaking
process for a director, and it's very difficult for a composer, too.
Sometimes I have written as much as 20 minutes of music for a film that
was never used. I am a composer who likes to develop and combine themes,
and it is awkward to develop themes that have never been properly
introduced because the scenes they were written for have been cut from
the film." Ultimately, for this project, Williams wrote 150 minutes of
music that featured 4,200 bars and 1,25 million notes. On the topic of
the book reading, Williams explained his break from tradition by saying,
"It is more valuable to me to be a tabula rasa; most of the audience
doesn't know what's coming, and it's important to place myself in that
same position. I want the film to make the first impression, and it is
also the film itself that has to give me the right sense of pace and
timing." In the case of
,
though, Williams admits that he "liked it very much, and it made me want
to read on, especially now that people have told me that each book gets
better than the one before."
In an interesting side note, Williams discussed how
difficult it is to predict how films with many children actors will
perform. With
remaining a strong memory, Williams
pointed out, "It is very hard to predict on the basis of auditions just
what you are going to get from a young performer, but sometimes you get
lucky. I have to say that everyone from Warner Brothers who has seen the
film is very excited about it, including the hard-bitten professionals."
Press interest in the score continued throughout the summer of 2001, and
in a follow up story in the Boston Globe on July 6th, Williams indicated
that his work on
was still
continuing and that he would finish it at Tanglewood within the
subsequent two months. He concluded by mentioning, "I'm really cooking
on it now. I've finished about an hour of the score, which means there
is a lot left to go. Chris Columbus has done such a good job on this
film, and all the old-time British character actors are terrific." At
the Tanglewood concert on July 31st, during his conducting of the first
theme of the score for an audience, Williams thrilled the crowd by
announcing, "We thought we would play a little preview of something from
. We're working on it currently and the film will be
finished at the end of October. I'm about 2/3 of the way through a
2-hour score. We'd like to play a few minutes of it for you now as a
preview with the exciting permission of our producers at Warner
Brothers. You know the books and the film is about witches, and unicorns
and owls and magic. And this particular little piece is about Hedwig the
Owl who brings messages from the world of the witches to the world of
the muggles... human beings...
. This is 'Hedwig's Theme' from
." And with that performance, the famous opening
"Prologue" heard (at least partially) in all of the films of the
franchise was formally introduced in an arrangement that didn't differ
much from that which has existed in numerous concerts and album
performances since. The composer eventually arranged multiple concert
presentations of his main themes for the film, and he could not have
predicted that this was among the first scores to be performed live to
screenings of the film by symphonies around the world.
Initial reactions to the performances of "Hedwig's Theme"
in both the concert and the trailers were overwhelmingly positive,
prompting Williams to increase its usage in the film itself. Richard
Dyer, the interviewer for The Boston Globe, stated at the time that "The
music is destined to be one of Williams' greatest hits, an
affectionately allusive tribute to great fantasy music of the past - but
in his own unmistakable voice; this parallels the way Rowling's book
stands on the shoulders of its predecessors like a nimble circus acrobat
about to grab a trapeze and fly away. The theme, an agreeably lopsided
and slippery waltz, appears first on Tchaikovsky's
Nutcracker
celesta, while the strings flutter around it like owlish wings. The
brass offer contrasting ideas, and the whole thing develops in the
tradition of Wagner's
Ride of the Valkyries and Humperdinck's
homage to it in the witch's ride in 'Hansel and Gretel.' In Williams's
masterly orchestration, the whole thing glistens, surprises, and
exhilarates." Fans expressed equal praise for the suite, likening its
styles to those heard in
Hook and
Home Alone. Bootlegged
copies of this theme, only a few minutes long, were already floating
around online in the months before the film's debut, and its usage in
the first two trailers for the film was largely based on the same
arrangement. Wild anticipation reigned until the terrorist attacks on
the United States in September of that year, however, squashed some of
the hype machine pushing the magnificent momentum of both the film and
score. Ironically, some of the final recording sessions in London
occurred on that day, and although Williams gave the musicians the
opportunity to take the day off to recover, they proceeded to record
anyway. By the week before the street date for the commercial soundtrack
album (and even longer before the release of the film), however, the
concept's cultish international following of an almost mystical nature
caused the album to crack the top ten in overall Billboard-reported
sales. The hype was back on. But would Williams accomplish the same kind
of success in meeting expectations as he did with
Star Wars: The
Phantom Menace? Initially, that answer was no, but the true shame of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was that the fans of the
composer and concept largely allowed their disappointment over the
deflating of this score's myth to be an unqualified reason to diminish
the work's overall quality.
Without question,
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone is a superb score, but for many, it wasn't the magical victory
that was expected. As far as precedent is concerned, Williams had
conjured some mightily impressive children's scores in his own past by
which to solicit comparisons. While the mass of the population is most
familiar with memorable scores for blockbuster films such as
E.T. The
Extra-Terrestrial and
Home Alone, the knowledgeable
collectors of Williams' work know that the composer's most thematically
rich and layered score of the genre is
Hook, for which expanded
bootleg albums had already been a hot trade item for many years. Even
though the film
Hook, despite being a massive Steven Spielberg
production, was a monumental disaster at the box office, its superior
score remains a treasure in countless film music fans' collections. It
is no surprise, therefore, that
Hook became the ultimate
comparison point for
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
Unfortunately, this score, despite all its strengths, does not triumph
at quite at the same level as
Hook, and it only comes close to
matching the same caliber in its grand thematic statements. The reason
for this opinion varies widely. For some, the score ironically lacked an
intangible sense of "magic" regardless of its liberal use of celesta,
harp, and other associated instruments, a near deathblow to its
effectiveness. For others, its themes were not well enough articulated
or applied to single concepts. Also at issue was the suspect quality of
the numerous source cues and non-thematic underscore material for
conversational scenes. Some even faulted the performances, though this
complaint still seems unmerited and due more to the reputation of the
ensemble that
didn't perform this score. What indeed is lacking
in
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is an intangible sense
of cohesiveness in all of its parts, with about half of the score
extremely tightly woven into the thematic tapestry Williams had
previously discussed. The rest of it remains surprisingly anonymous and
fails to foreshadow the franchise's future. Additionally, there was an
intangible element to
Hook, perhaps in its lengthy, heavy-hearted
thematic performances, that gave the score sense of magic that rivaled
the grandiose brand of soaring spirit heard in
E.T. and Williams'
other better-known scores. Such spirit is only occasionally to be heard
in this score.
Other than this awkwardly nebulous complaint about lacking
a sense of "magic,"
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a
score that has built upon its reputation through the years for good
reason. It has all the same basic ingredients that define a Williams
classic: an intricately woven set of themes of impressive complexity, a
large performing group recorded in crisp digital sound, a chorus with
adult male and female voices, and that trademark Williams orchestration
that can be recognized by even the laziest moviegoers. The themes are,
as usual, the most important elements at work in nearly every one of his
works, and the leading three ideas that were initially heard in the
trailers and early concert performances not only define this score but
those that followed as well. The two most memorable themes in Williams'
treatment of the franchise are closely related, and both tend to
mistakenly be labeled as "Hedwig's Theme." In fact, there are two
distinct waltz-inspired themes under that label that the composer
applies to different, specific situations. The actual theme for Hedwig
the Owl is one that the composer expanded to represent the concept of
magic in general, often utilizing the same celesta and other light
percussive accompaniment to denote a sense of wonder. It is this theme
that opens both "Prologue" and the "Hedwig's Theme" suite, and it is
also this idea that Doyle, Hooper, Alexander Desplat, and James Newton
Howard most prominently incorporated (though too infrequently) into the
opening portions of their sequel and spin-off works. In the first score,
Williams uses the theme extensively. It makes a cameo in the "Harry's
Wondrous World" concert suite and punctuates several of the scenes in
which Harry's background is explored or during his discovery of the
world of magic. This includes delicate performances in "The Arrival of
Baby Harry" and "Letters From Hogwarts." Later, it contributes to "The
Moving Stairs," "The Quidditch Match," and "Leaving Hogwarts." Among the
most notable cues not fully included on the first commercial album
release, the theme also lends a supporting role to "Don't Burn My
Letter," "Letters From Hogwarts," and "Owl Delivers Nimbus 2000" before
joining the other themes in the end credits arrangement of two suites.
This theme dominates the pre-Hogwarts scenes in the film, not only
serving as an identity for the magic invading the muggle world, but also
of the owls' letters, which play a significant role in these early
scenes.
The second half of the official "Hedwig Theme" conveys the
robust and noble theme for the establishment of the magical world, and,
by association, Hogwarts itself. It is heard most frequently in
Williams' three scores of the franchise during the title sequences or
overhead shots of the castle. This bold idea is something of an
extension of the actual Hedwig/magic theme, sharing many of the same
progressions and often swapping phrases before coming to a common three
notes that utilize a shared minor-third shifting conclusion to tie them
together. This minor third progression at the end of the two themes is
key to the score's more mysterious half. This Hogwarts variation on
theme is heard fleetingly in "Prologue" and at the opening of "Harry's
Wondrous World" before accompanying the main title of the film (with the
help of chorus) in "The Arrival of Baby Harry" and concluding "Letters
From Hogwarts." The theme's performance (again with chorus) at 1:50 into
"The Journey to Hogwarts," as the school is first seen, is a highlight
of the score, and Williams would treat the first glimpse of the castle
in all three of his scores for the franchise in similar fashion. This
tradition would extend all the way to the castle's appearance in
Howard's
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. A slight
woodwind performance in "The Invisibility Cloak and The Library Scene"
and counterpoint fragments in "The Face of Voldemort" are less obvious.
A full burst for the castle is enjoyed late in "Running to McGonagall."
The last minute of the "Hedwig's Theme" suite offers the most
interesting and forceful series of key-shifting variations on the theme.
In the originally unreleased cues, this theme accompanies Hedwig's magic
theme in the same aforementioned cues involving the other half of the
theme and also in the wrap of the score in "Love, Harry." While these
two themes are the obvious, primary identity of
Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone, Williams' third idea, representing the concept of
flying, is far more engaging. This flying theme is sometimes associated
solely with the game of Quidditch, though its application in the film is
more general. Heard slightly in "Prologue" and "A Visit to the Zoo," the
theme doubles as a mischievous application of magic in some
circumstances. It makes its biggest impact in "Mr. Longbottom Flies" and
"The Quidditch Match" before dominating the middle sections of the
"Hedwig's Theme" suite. It's a playful romp of an idea that the
franchise sorely missed later due to the frightfully serious nature of
subsequent stories.

One of the beauties of the flying theme in
Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone is its soaring secondary phrase. After all the
chime and tambourine-banging, pulsating brass, and broad notes on bass
strings during the propulsive theme's primary phrase, Williams offers an
interlude that allows high strings to stretch their wings (such as at
3:30 into "Hedwig's Theme") in much of the majestic style that would
prevail in
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. A fourth
major theme in
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is comprised
of two parts for Harry and his growing friendship with Ron and Hermione
on one hand and his distant relationship with his dead parents on the
other. This theme is the basis of the "Harry's Wondrous World" suite and
receives extended treatment there. It's a flourishing, hopelessly
optimistic idea that reaches into the most exuberant material that
Williams has written for concert, and especially his material devoted to
the history of America. It culminates in several fanfares that tie it to
the spirited, heroic parts of Williams'
Star Wars prequel
material as well. In the actual film, this theme is heard very lightly
in "The Arrival of Baby Harry" and "Entry into the Great Hall" before
the more rambunctious parts blast away in "The Quidditch Match."
Melancholy performances in "Christmas at Hogwarts" and "Leaving
Hogwarts" are wholesome reminders that it's hard to leave the company of
friends. Hints of the theme in "The Face of Voldemort" are cleverly and
appropriately devised. In the expanded album presentations, this theme's
more melancholy portion for Harry's family exists in the contemplative
"The Mirror of Erised" and "Love, Harry," as well as the expected end
credits suites. The final major duo of themes in this score belongs to
the evil Voldemort and the Sorcerer's Stone, though they eventually
reveal themselves to be connected, of course. For the latter, the
identity is applied by Williams in this and, more extensively,
Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as a general mystery motif
representing objects of Voldemort's interest. (Had Williams continued
later in the franchise, it might have become the motif for the
Horcruxes.) Its usage in both scores is the most intriguing and
rewarding of any of Williams' complexities for the concept. Its two
hypnotic phrases, one three notes and the subsequent one four, are easy
to insert as counterpoint into even the least obvious places, and the
melodramatic shifts in the secondary, four-note phrase are especially
enticing in their applications.
The themes of evil in
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone are often incorporated with superb subtlety. As Harry
discovers he can communicate with snakes in "Visit to the Zoo," the cue
provides two statements of the mystery motif (at 0:05 and 1:15) to once
again suggest an object of potential peril. The most telling and obvious
performance of the theme's first figure is repeated several times in
"The Gringotts Vault" (addressing the attempted robbery of the stone by
the possessed Quirrel), eventually building to the kind of maddening
though tonal choral performance that would exist extensively in the
sequel. It makes a cameo in "Hagrid's Christmas Tree" during discussion
of Nicholas Flamel and likewise in "Hermione's Reading," and it occupies
the first half of "The Stone," extensively building to another choral
crescendo that in this case is reminiscent of the religious prowess
heard in the map room sequence of
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Williams, never the one to miss an opportunity, even inserts the idea
into "Hedwig's Theme;" in the thirty seconds following the two-minute
mark, a solo woodwind performs the theme very slowly as counterpoint
underneath the flying theme. It's a quite delicious placement, really.
The most intelligent passage for this mystery object motif comes as
Williams finally intertwines it explicitly with a separate idea for
Voldemort. After the early portions of "The Face of Voldemort" develop
the stone's theme on the airy electronics that are employed during many
of the scarier sequences in the film, Williams begins to allow
Voldemort's own theme to be exposed at 1:56 into the cue, and by 3:58,
the two ideas are both forcefully overlapped. The Voldemort theme is a
clever twist of the waltz format and progressions of the Hedwig theme's
secondary variant for Hogwarts, and it doesn't become illuminated until
an examination of the full score. Often conveyed by low woodwinds, this
theme is introduced lightly at 1:07 into "Harry Gets His Wand" and at
0:58 into "Hagrid's Flashback" before its sinewy progressions are better
revealed at 1:22 and 2:06 in the latter cue. The last moments of "The
Dark Forest" allude to the idea as well. Several secondary motifs exist
in the score, and some recur with just enough frequency to be marginally
memorable. The pageantry of Hogwarts' culture is conveyed in a school
theme written by Williams (and vocalized by a choir in an unused
recording) called "Hogwarts Forever," and the idea ultimately comes to
represent the Gryffindor house late in "House Selection" and early in
"Entry Into the Great Hall" before erupting in "The Quidditch
Match."
Other motifs of intrigue in
Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone include the melody heard on celesta at 0:17 into
"The Prologue - Privet Drive" and returning late in "Hermione's
Reading." More interesting is Williams' idea for forbidden forest in the
first two minutes of "The Dark Forest" that would return in the
subsequent score in the franchise. The remainder of the score's less
thematic parts isn't as engaging. Much of this material, concentrated in
the middle sequences of the score, fails to leave a strong enough
impression to maintain a memorable listening experience on album. Some
stylistic aspects of these portions, as well as some of the major
themes, contain blatant similarities to Williams works like
Hook,
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,
Home Alone,
Star
Wars: The Phantom Menace, among half a dozen others. Some listeners
at the time expressed concern over these portions, citing the "Williams
on auto-pilot" effect of marginal self-plagiarism that tended to be a
minor issue with even some of his better-known scores of the era. As
usual for Williams, there are a handful of interesting motifs tied to
single scenes that should be discussed, if either for their obvious
homage to the composer's previous scores, or their differing style from
surrounding material. Some of the source material in the score is
especially difficult to digest. The "Hogwarts Forever!" school song was
not ultimately used (though Doyle created his own variation for his lone
entry in the series); its nearly unlistenable French horn performances
make that piece a positive omission. The "Diagon Alley" source material
(for the pub and beyond) breaks the mood with its festive nature. More
awkward is "Christmas at Hogwarts," a distantly-mixed vocal song with
high, dissonant electronic accompaniment that eventually wanders right
into the halls of stock holiday percussion from
Home Alone. The
opening of "The Chess Game" presents percussion and woodwind
performances directly pulled from the battle preparation scenes late in
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. This entire cue is full of
references to the
Star Wars battle sequences, even going back to
the percussion of the "The Snow Battle" in
The Empire Strikes
Back. The resounding, snare-ripping rhythm late in the cue, mixed
very prominently into the film, is somewhat redemptive, though the
entire piece still suffers from a severe case of familiarity. Another
typical move by Williams is to use bubbly solo instruments like a tuba
to represent cuteness for moments of levity; a few of those are
distractions here.
Realistically, though, even if you buy into the
argument that parts of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
score exhibit Williams on auto-pilot, the music that comes from the
composer even at those times is superior to most of what comes from the
rest of the industry, and such music still functions very well as the
foundation for the subsequent two sequel scores. The impact of this
score is never so powerful as the emotional punch of
A.I. Artificial
Intelligence earlier in 2001, but even with its faults tallied, it
translates into an interesting and enjoyable score on album. Its
functionality in the film has never been substantively questioned. On
its original 2001 album,
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
features Williams' typical late 1990's/early 2000's format of combining
similar cues into duos that stay pretty true to the chronology of the
film's plot. The middle section of the score, outside of the hyperactive
"The Quidditch Match," contains too much forgettable material to make
the 73-minute product from Warner a winning experience from start to
finish. A compilation of the concert suites, as well as the whimsical
pair of "The Arrival of Baby Harry" and "Visit to the Zoo and Letters
from Hogwarts" are a good start, and about thirty additional minutes
could be collected to produce an excellent 50-minute presentation.
Speculation about an expanded album was rampant in 2001, and it was
thought that a 2-CD set with some of the multimedia content available on
the European release of the score could contribute to a subsequent
release in 2002. That expanded issue did not arrive until 2018, however,
and that fact was more likely due to Williams' own satisfaction with the
mostly comprehensive nature of the first release rather than any fault
of the music or film's popularity. This circumstance didn't stop fans
from bootlegging decent-sounding expanded versions of the score, usually
including an excess of 100 minutes of material and spanning two CDs.
While the addition of the film version of "End Credits" is nice to hear,
the 9-minute piece is nothing more than a merging of the concert
arrangements from the score. Most of the additional material is
redundant; unlike later entries in the franchise, this score's original
album wasn't missing any flagrantly obvious cues of greatness. Some of
the actively traded bootlegs pushed the running time out to complete
levels, though artifacts in sound quality were sometimes an issue. The
commercial product provided more than enough music to satisfy most
listeners and remains proof that
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone is, despite its minor flaws, an underrated modern classic in
Williams' career.
In 2018, La-La Land Records produced a lavish 7-CD set
containing expansions of all three Williams scores for the franchise,
including three CDs dedicated to
The Sorcerer's Stone. The first
two CDs offer the score as heard in the film, with the exception of
splitting off the two concert arrangements of the main themes at the end
rather than combining them into the shorter end credits edit. This
134-minute experience can be a bit laborious in its entirety, though
enthusiasts of the score will finally receive the two themes of evil,
for the stone and Voldemort, in their complete development. Source-like
cues such as "Cast a Christmas Spell," with the singing ghosts over
electronic ambience, is a detriment to the listening experience, and
sound effects like the blowing of wind in "Hermione's Feather" sometimes
interject. Newly released action material like "Fighting the Troll" is
somewhat non-descript. The third CD is a curiosity in that it contains
nine cues that existed as part of a "Children's Suite for Orchestra"
that Williams wrote voluntarily for the final days of recording
sessions. Only a few of these were available on the original album,
including the fully orchestral portions. This set provides all nine, and
most of the exploration of the each concept themes is assigned one
section of players alone. While technically masterful, these recordings
aren't particularly attractive; if each set of sections had been
emphasized over the full ensemble, the recordings could have been
resounding, but that would have defeated the point of the exercise.
Additional tracks include source music (the flute performance of the
Hedwig theme as heard in Hagrid's hut and more Diagon Alley material).
Three trailer cues recorded specifically by Williams for the early
promotion of the film are the best offerings on the third CD; two
alternate, unused cues are of less interest. Some of the material
presented on 2018 album differs from the bootlegs' content; the excerpt
from "The Dark Forest" on the bootleg doesn't feature the electronics
over its eerie forest motif. One lingering disappointment about these
Williams scores on album is the lack of a DVD audio presentation with
the 5.1 surround sound that these expanded offerings were mixed down
from. With those masterings available, audiophiles can hope for such a
product in the future. Otherwise, the standard lossless stereo sound on
the set is well refined. Williams' preferred ensembles, the London
Symphony Orchestra and London Voices, would combine the following year
for
The Chamber of Secrets, an impressive effort that
intelligently expands upon some of the less obvious parts of this first
score. As wishes for Williams to return for the
Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows films went unrealized, this original entry was
cemented as the popular classic of the franchise.
***** @Amazon.com: CD or
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