John Williams: Serendipitous Concert Conductor

John Williams is one of the most renowned film composers in history. He has penned unforgettable scores for Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Superman, and countless other films. Fans flock to his many concerts, and with forty-eight Academy Award nominations as of 2013, he is the second-most Oscar-nominated person after Walt Disney. Yet despite such critical acclaim and prestige, this is the first book in English on Williams’s work and career. Combining accessible writing with thorough scholarship, and rigorous historical accounts with insightful readings, John Williams’s Film Music explores why Williams is so important to the history of film music. Beginning with an overview of music from Hollywood’s Golden Age (1933–58), Emilio Audissino traces the turning points of Williams’s career and articulates how he revived the classical Hollywood musical style. This book charts each landmark of this musical restoration, with special attention to the scores for Jaws and Star Wars, Williams’s work as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, and a full film/music analysis of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The result is a precise, enlightening definition of Williams’s “neoclassicism” and a grounded demonstration of his lasting importance, for both his compositions and his historical role in restoring part of the Hollywood tradition.

The focus of this paper is the reception of Ludwig van Beethoven’s works at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the establishment of symphony orchestras and other cultural institutions. These works include symphonic and chamber music, performed in the framework of symphonic concerts as presented by the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra and chamber music as presented by chamber music festivals. This paper will shine a light onto the preserved concert programs of the orchestras, as well as other concerts that can be traced in newspapers and other printed magazines, in order to demonstrate how Beethoven’s compositions became part of the concert programming. The rapid but simultaneously abrupt growth of the cultural scene in the twentieth century, was interweaved with what kind of compositions and what composers could be included in concert programs, taking into consideration the restrictions that governed large performances such as performers’ numbers and the diversity of instrumental players, who would support the staging of certain works. The reception of Beethoven’s works is studied in the changing local political, historical, social and cultural context.

The article featured a concert activity of the Khmelnytskyi regional philharmonic society through the prism of creative relationships with Lviv musicians. In general, the author examines his important art-study projects, implementing the participants of composers, musicologists, conductors and performers from Galicia, which take place on Khmelnytskyi stages in recent years. A special emphasis are made by the participants of the Lviv artists in the concert program of the International Festival of Musical Art "Khmelnytskyi Stone Fest", full-scale opera productions "Nazar Stodolia" by K. Dankevich, "Stolen Happiness" by Y. Mateus, and also the concert performance of the "Charming Flute" by VA Mozart within the framework of the "Classik open-air show" project, the implementation of master classes for conductors and a number of other thematic programs. As a conclusion, the importance of concert and philharmonic activity, which provides the musical aesthetic and cognitive needs of a wide audience of listeners, as well as the support of the powerful musical dialogue of Lviv and Khmelnytsky, who care about the European performance traditions laid by generations, are emphasized.

Herrman S. Saroni: Paths to Success as a Composer in New York, 1844–52