Stefan Geiger Conductor
Jess Gillam Saxophone
“Heroines and Heroes”
Film music from
Superman,
Indiana Jones,
Star Wars,
Gone with the Wind,
Forrest Gump,
Batman and Robin Hood, among others
Superman, Batman, Robin Hood, Princess Leia, Indiana Jones or Forrest Gump – entire generations of cinema fans have grown up with these screen heroes. And always inseparably connected with it in my mind: the music with which ingenious film composers unforgettablely characterized these characters. Above all, of course, the American soundtrack legend John Williams, who not only wrote the music for »Star Wars«, »Indiana Jones« and »Superman«, but also for a whole series of other Spielberg films. Williams’ masterful scores also make up the lion’s share of the film music concert, with which the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra under Stefan Geiger is building on the success of last season.
But the undeniable role models for Williams & Co. are also there this time: Erich Wolfgang Korngold and his heroic music for “Robin Hood” as well as Max Steiner and his legendary theme from “Gone with the Wind”. With their colorfully instrumented soundtracks, which drew deeply from the fundus of late romantic European symphony, the exiled Austrians in the USA created the prototype of the opulent “Hollywood sound”, which composers such as Williams, Danny Elfman and Alan Silvestri gratefully took up and developed further.