He mirrors in his music the dual role of the character, the young girl and the woman, the innocence and the maturity, the true person and the outward facade. Here Williams weaves together his two themes for the main character. It does not follow any particular classical formula but in his typical fashion Williams has arranged the material so that the programme creates variety, contrast and a dramatic arc for the work. Later he orchestrated this version for symphony orchestra and it was performed in several concerts and finally became part of the Suite from Memoirs of a Geisha for Cello and Orchestra.Īs mentioned above the Suite is divided to six movements. It was this version of the Sayuri’s theme Williams performed with Yo-Yo Ma at Late Night with Jay Leno during the pre-Oscar PR efforts to promote his score in the early 2006. He recorded these two pieces with Yo-Yo Ma (third selection being a solo cello piece A Dream Discarded) and those were made available in iTunes along with a special 10-minute interview. During the same year Williams also composed duets for piano and cello that developed his thematic material further, Sayuri’s theme and Going to School receiving considerable expansion and embellisment. This suite included nearly unaltered versions of soundtrack counterparts of Sayuri’s theme, Going to School, Chairman’s Waltz and Sayuri’s Theme and End Credits but arranged for a chamber orchestra. After the film’s release in 2005 Williams, who obviously felt a special affinity for this music and film, arranged an exclusive suite from the film score for the “President’s Own” Unites States Marine Chamber Orchestra which performed the selections on the 29th of May in 2006. He had ample time and reason to revisit and rethink the musical ideas in the intervening 3 years after the film had come out and before the suite was created. This suite can be said to be a product of a long development period as Williams prepared his music from the film to be performed by orchestra and different ensembles several times before creating the 6-movement piece. The brass section seems to be comprised of mainly French horns as it was in the soundtrack recording. He succeeds exceedingly well in mimicing the timbral aspects and sounds of koto, shakuhachi, shamisen and erhu with the strings and woodwinds. However in these pieces Williams has recorchestrated the music for the symphony orchestra, filling now the roles of Japanese ethnic instruments, so colourfully used in the film score, with the sounds of the traditional symphonic ones. The suite utilizes for the most part a standard Western symphony orchestra but is enhanced by Japanese instrumentation, most prominently the percussion. It was recorded live at the event and has been since released on Sony Masterworks label (the old Sony Classical) on two different occasions, first as a part of the Yo-Yo Ma: 30 Years Outside the Box (a 90 CD collection!!!) and then in 2010 on a John Williams compilation album The Music of America John Williams. The suite premiered in the autumn of 2008 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma as the soloist and John Williams himself conducting. Each movement is a self-contained development of a single theme or a few musical ideas where the composer showcases the cello as the main solo instrument but significant solos are assigned to violin, oboe and flute. The suite is in classic Williams tradition a significant reworking and reimagining of the thematic material found in the score presented in six movements. Williams wrote it specifically with the famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in mind, who had also performed on the original soundtrack of the film. The piece is written for a symphony orchestra and a cello soloist. The Suite from Memoirs of a Geisha is a concert work based on John Williams’ 2005 film score of the same name.
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