Movie music is epic. It brings emotion and momentum to countless scenes, and it's fun to hear live while listening to narratives about how the music added to great movies. That's what Film Night at Tanglewood is. This was my second time going to one (I went two years ago), and it was fantastic. We had John Williams conducting the Boston Pops and Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies hosting. Two years ago we got surprise Steven Spielberg, but no such luck this time. Still, Osborne was very informative and extremely engaging. As the Pops performed, movie clips played on the screen, and in-between songs, Osborne would give us some tidbits on the movie music was from or about movie music in general. For example, there was a time when movie music wasn't really respected among composers, and people who wrote music for movies were looked down upon. Also, music in movies used to come from a source within the movie, like a player piano or a band in the background, not from no where like it is today. Today, you wouldn't imagine a movie without music.
The Pops played a set of "Hollywood's Golden Age" with music by different composers from and about movies and after an intermission played "Celebrating Steven Spielberg" with music by Williams. They sounded great and as they flowed through each movement, I felt like I was experiencing the movies themselves.
List of what each set included:
"Hollywood's Golden Age"
Hooray for Hollywood - Whiting (arr. Williams)
Suite from "Sunset Boulevard" - Waxman
Scene d'Amour from "Vertigo" - Herrmann
Forest Meeting and March from "Spartacus" - North
Chinatown - Goldsmith
Lawrence of Arabia - Jarre
"Celebrating Steven Spielberg"
Two Selections from "Jaws" (Theme and Barrel Chase Sequence)
Excerpts from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
Two selections with the Buti Young Artists Chorus (Exultate Justi from "Empire of the Sun" and Dry Your Tears, Afrika from "Amistad")
March from "1941"
Theme from "Schindler's List"
A Tribute to Steven Spielberg (Medley with music from "Close Encounters," "Jaws, "Jurassic Park," "Munich," and "ET."
That was all that was listed in the program, but Williams and the Pops gave us one more, which I was very excited about: "Indiana Jones."
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