Canter Bridge

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In retrospect, it was probably inevitable that John Williams and Itzhak Perlman should come together in the making of the soundtrack for Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, arguably the finest motion picture ever made. How could the theme and its treatment do with other than film music’s established master and one of the greatest violinists of all time?

The soundtrack deserves ever kind of kudos that can be spoken of film music, and perhaps doubled at that. From the haunting theme to its reprise with the harrowing bass undercurrent, Williams has given us music worthy of weeping over. That he has done so in memory of six million souls consumed by the Shoah turns great music into something close to a sacred offering.

For a soundtrack there are few tracks—only fourteen—and each of them is long by conventional standards. This makes the listening through them an exercise in sustained and profoundly emotional attentiveness. Each track, from ‘Auschwitz-Birkenau’ (3’41”) to ‘Schindler’s Workforce’ (10’36’) becomes in the hands of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Ramat Gan Chamber Choir a tone poem of epic resonance and deep intelligence.

Several months ago, I wrote with some embarrassment when I offered the highly subjective judgment that Schindler’s List is the greatest of all motion pictures to date. The feeling returns now as I say the same, in the realm of film music, of John Williams’ incomparable achievement.