Munich Soundtrack CD

Out of print in the U.S.! Original soundtrack to Steven Spielberg's 2005 motion picture Munich. The soundtrack features original music from John Williams. Decca.

Composer: John Williams .
Personnel: Lisbeth Scott (vocals); Dean Parks (guitar); JoAnn Turovsky (harp); Eun Mee Ahn, Irina Voloshina, Anatoly Rosinsky, Katia Popov, Ana Landauer, Alan Grunfeld, Helen Nightengale, Ken Yerke, Bing Wang, Rene Mandel, Kevin Connelly, Radu Pieptea, Eric J. Hosler, Lisa Sutton, Richard Altenbach, Roberto Cani, Bruce Dukov, Clayton Haslop, Phillipe Levy, Sara Parkins, Sarah Thornblade, Roger Wilkie, Dimitrie Leivici, Miwako Watanabe, Rafael Rishik, Endre Granat (violin); Marlo Fisher, Shawn Mann, Michael Nowak, Steve Gordon, Brian Dembow, Keith Greene, Roland Kato, Janet Lakatos, Simon Oswell, Thomas Dienner, Darrin McCann, Robert Berg (viola); Timothy Landauer, Tony Cooke, Paul Cohen , Stephen Erdody, Armen Ksadjikian, Andrew Shulman, David Speltz, Cecilia Tsan, John Walz, Christine Ermacoff (cello); Steve L. Roberts, Joshua Ranz, Ralph Williams (clarinet, bass clarinet); Gary Bovyer (clarinet); John MacArthur Ellis (oboe); Pedro Eustache (woodwinds); Bill Booth, Bill Reichenbach Jr. , George Thatcher (trombone); Doug Tornquist (tuba); Steve Becknell, Rick Todd, Jim Thatcher (horns); Chet Swiatkowski, Gloria Cheng, Randy Kerber (piano); Alan Estes, Gregory Goodall, Jerry Williams , Tom Raney, Mike Fisher (percussion).
Audio Mixer: Shawn Murphy.
Liner Note Author: Steven Spielberg.
Recording information: Sony Pictures Studios; Culver City; California.
Editors: Ken Wannberg; Ramiro Belgardt.
Easily one of John Williams's finest film scores of the early 21st century, this album finds the prolific composer offering up appropriately moody orchestral pieces for Steven Spielberg's acclaimed drama, MUNICH, which is based on events following the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972. From the mournful "Munich 1972" to the tense "Letter Bombs" to the pensive "Avner's Theme" to the gentle "End Credits," Williams's string-driven music effectively conveys the dramatic ebb and flow of Spielberg's masterly movie.
In his brief liner notes (really more of an appreciation), director Steven Spielberg points out that composer John Williams' score for Munich, Spielberg's film about Israeli attempts to track down and kill the Palestinians responsible for the massacre of Israel's 1972 Olympic team, is his fourth score of 2005, following Star Wars: Episode Three -- Revenge of the Sith, Spielberg's own War of the Worlds, and Memoirs of a Geisha. That's not a bad output for a man who also celebrated his 73rd birthday during the year. Pointing to the very different sorts of film the four titles represent, Spielberg calls Williams "a master of disguise," a composer able to serve the different needs of such varying subjects. Every film composer must have something of that versatility, though in fact Williams may have it less than most, as he is the closest thing to a traditional Hollywood composer still active. With Munich, he is put in an area that is very familiar to him, since the film is set in Europe, allowing him to draw upon his familiarity with and affection for European classical music. He employs a large orchestra, and for the most part he has written a conservative score for it to play. The one aspect of the project that is unusual is the film's darkness, beginning with the massacre and then following the increasingly problematic actions of those assigned to exact revenge. This does not allow for the kind of stirring, swashbuckling themes of a Star Wars movie. Rather, it involves minor keys, lots of low tones (no less than eight basses are used), and plenty of slow tempos. To make this tolerable, onscreen and on disc, Williams alternates the passages of dread with more romantic (but still sad) ones. Thus, the throbbing, percussive "Letter Bombs" is followed by "A Prayer for Peace," and other lyrical cues such as "Avner and Daphn