American Images
Famous film music from Vertigo, Star Wars and E.T.
Under the baton of Stéphane Denève, the Concertgebouworkest performs iconic film music by Bernard Herrmann, John Williams and others, as well as music that needs no film at all to evoke images.
Brilliant music for romantic adventure films about duelling musketeers.
Concert programme
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Jennifer Higdon
blue cathedral
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Peter Lieberson
Neruda Songs
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-- interval --
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Alfred Newman
20th Century Fox Fanfare
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Erich Korngold
The Sea Hawk
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Bernard Herrmann
Vertigo: Prelude/The Nightmare, Scene d'amour
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John Williams
E.T.: Adventures on Earth
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John Williams
Star Wars: Princess Leia's Theme
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John Williams
Star Wars: Main Title
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John Williams
Star Wars: The Imperial March
Performers
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Stéphane Denève
conductor
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Kelley O'Connor
mezzo-soprano
About this concert
The Concertgebouworkest has organised all its concert programmes in January to reflect the theme ‘Made in America’.
‘America is the only country which is home to so-called film composers. Outside the US, there are composers who occasionally work on a film,’ claimed Bernard Herrmann, who set his terrifying musical seal on many of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. The days when film music was dismissed as second-rate are well and truly over. Various film scores have since earned a well-deserved place in the orchestral repertoire.
No such programme would be complete without John Williams, of course. After all, what would Steven Spielberg or George ‘Star Wars’ Lucas have done without him? Then there’s Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who was an acclaimed opera composer in Vienna until the threat of Nazism forced him to flee to California. His sense of theatre was put to good use in his brilliant scores for romantic adventure films about duelling musketeers and passionate love stories.
Many American composers write ‘cinematic’ music which needs no film at all. Evoking emotional images, Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral is a work dedicated to the memory of her brother who died young. The first performances of Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs were the heartbreaking farewell of his terminally ill wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson, to her audiences.
Dates and tickets
About this concert
The Concertgebouworkest has organised all its concert programmes in January to reflect the theme ‘Made in America’.
‘America is the only country which is home to so-called film composers. Outside the US, there are composers who occasionally work on a film,’ claimed Bernard Herrmann, who set his terrifying musical seal on many of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. The days when film music was dismissed as second-rate are well and truly over. Various film scores have since earned a well-deserved place in the orchestral repertoire.
No such programme would be complete without John Williams, of course. After all, what would Steven Spielberg or George ‘Star Wars’ Lucas have done without him? Then there’s Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who was an acclaimed opera composer in Vienna until the threat of Nazism forced him to flee to California. His sense of theatre was put to good use in his brilliant scores for romantic adventure films about duelling musketeers and passionate love stories.
Many American composers write ‘cinematic’ music which needs no film at all. Evoking emotional images, Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral is a work dedicated to the memory of her brother who died young. The first performances of Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs were the heartbreaking farewell of his terminally ill wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson, to her audiences.