John Williams: Themes & Transcriptions for Piano – Simone Pedroni

Williams, John Towner (b.1932)

The People’s House

The American Process

Getting Out The Vote

The Blue And Grey

The Peace Delegation

Elegy

The Meeting With Grant

With Malice Toward None (from Lincoln)

Theme

Remembering Carolyn

The Asteroid Field (from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back)

Luke and Leia (from Star Wars Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi)

The Visitor And The Book Thief

Max And Liesel

The Snow Fight

Learning To Read

Max’s Departure

The Visitor At Himmel Street

Finale

Theme

Hedwig’s Flight

Voldemort

Hogwarts Forever

Fluffy’s Harp

Buckbeak’s Flight

A Window To The Past

Aunt Marge’s Waltz

Simone Pedroni is a brilliant classical pianist and former Van Cliburn Award-Gold Medal winner. John Williams is the best-selling film composer of our time. Both Williams and Pedroni each transcribed about half of the material on this album, which premieres Williams’ own piano suites from Lincoln, and The Book Thief, plus Pedroni’s own special transcriptions of music from Harry Potter, Star Wars, Schindler’s List and more. The album is a stunning and unique presentation of John Williams’ film music, without the usual symphony orchestra. It runs a very long 80 minutes.

John Williams is without question the most popular film music composer of our time. Everyone knows his immortal melodies, which have become inextricably linked with legendary movie hits. The Italian pianist Simone Pedroni, gold medal winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, has recorded some of John Williams’ most famous compositions on the piano for the film music label Varèse Sarabande.

In addition to such masterpieces as For Lack of Evidence (1990), Star Wars Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Star Wars Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983), Schindler’s List (1993), or the Harry Potter melodies, which are already classics, two more recent works by John Williams take center stage here: Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) and Brian Percival’s The Book Thief (2013).

This recording occupies a special position in the diverse repertoire of John Williams recordings. You can sense and hear that the equally brilliant pianist John William has been conceiving his later large-scale orchestrated film scores for more than 55 years, initially in an intimate setting for solo piano. An intoxicating rediscovery of well-known melodies!

Reviews

“Pedroni is an absolute fan of the music of John Williams. (…) The result is delicate audio images without a movie.” (crescendo)