John Williams - Saving Private Ryan: Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

What appears on screen during the World War II movie Saving Private Ryan suggests that director Steven Spielberg has studied the hyperviolence of Quentin Tarantino, John Woo, and Stanley Kubrick (think Full Metal Jacket). What you hear, however, assures that Spielberg still collects Norman Rockwell paintings. Composed by Spielberg's long-time musical companion, John Williams, Ryan denies the pair's penchant for ebullience in favor of funereal grace. Rather than mirror the visual kinetics, Williams lends the gunfire a tone-poem aura. Oliver Stone's Platoon makes the best comparison; remember how Barber's Adagio for Strings accompanied its most bloody moments? Williams later worked with Stone on JFK and Nixon, providing scores so somber, they qualified as morose. They remain two of his best, and Saving Private Ryan shares their restraint. --Marc Weidenbaum Amazon.com essential recording

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Saving Private Ryan is a wonderful film, but the music from it is really something that comes along only once in a long while. It is superb music, and so perfectly suits the subject. It is brilliant music worthy of belonging to the classical era.

March 31, 2008

SAVING JOHN WILLIAMS-TO MY PLAYLISTS

Saving Private Ryan is by far my favorite film and to have recently experienced "classical crossover," the soundtrack by John Williams astounds me. His music sets EVERY mood that puts a fine edge to the film. I have shuffled this soundtrack many times within my easy listening playlists and the music never gets old. December 29, 2007

Williams And Spielberg Remember D-Day

The long and exceptionally fruitful collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams reached an incredible high in 1998 with the release of Spielberg's epic World War II drama SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Few films that have ever delved into the fighting aspects of this, the last real all-out classic War, have ever been as honest, brutal, and blunt as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was. And Williams understood this as much.

But whereas in decades past he might have turned on the bombast (as he did for the 1976 film MIDWAY), for SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, he goes for a combination of subtlety, poignancy, and stirring (but not over-the-top) patriotic anthems. The score, performed under Williams' direction by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, features stirring contributions by principal trumpet soloists Tim Morrison and Thomas Rolfs and horn soloist Gus Sebring. Of particular note is the now-famous "Hymn To The Fallen", which, like Williams' theme for SCHINDLER'S LIST, is considered to be a piece to be played at memorial services, especially since the 9/11 attacks.

And just like SCHINDLER'S LIST, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN shows that there is more to John Williams than the bold, spectacular scores he is known for. That kind of diversity has always made him perhaps the most sought-after composer of Hollywood film music, and for a lot of good reasons. This is a must-have for film score buffs in particular, but also music fans in general. December 26, 2007

soul-stopping

One wonders what people will say about John Williams in, say, the year 2050. The man just keeps producing scores that, if it were possible, surpass the prior one in elegance, emotional weight, and sheer, gorgeous, spellbinding beauty?

Gushing?

I don't think so. Listen to this soundtrack before you conclude that this reviewer has gone out-of-his-mind starry.

Williams embellishes a great movie with a superlative soundtrack that is memorable not for its fireworks but for its muscular, toned way of holding back. In producing this kind of restrained aural backdrop for PRIVATE RYAN, the composer makes his contribution to the magnificent dignifying of the American soldiers' sacrifice in WWII that raises the film above the genre of war flicks to a level where it partakes of something greater than clever description.

Listen to the trumpets. Luxuriate in the never completely absent tympanic presence. Hear the snare, Williams' one token of martial thematics, over and over again, reminding us that this is war as much as it is music.

Leave room for tears. Williams' score elevates the souls but will not allow one to forgo the tears. Just listen. And weep if you must. November 28, 2007

MY REVIEW OF "SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" SOUNDTRACK

THERE ARE SEVERAL RENDITIONS THAT ARE MORE MOVING THAN SOME OF THE PATRIOTIC SONGS WE SING AND HEARD SINCE WE WERE CHILDREN. THE TITLE SONG WAS THE BEST. SEVERAL OF THE SONGS WERE "NOT SO HOT", BUT OVERALL, IT WAS A GREAT MOVIE AND MY PURCHASE OF THE SOUNDTRACK WAS WELL WORTH THE PRICE. I WOULD GIVE THIS ALBUM A "B" OVERALL, AND THE TITLE SONG A "A PLUS" August 23, 2007

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