The Star Wars Trilogy

Composed by John Williams

Orchestrated and Conducted by John Williams

Performed by The Skywalker Symphony Orchestra

Produced by Thomas Z. Shepard and John Williams

Released by Sony Classical Records on July 1st, 1991

Total Running Time: 55:40

     Face it, if you’re a true Star Wars geek, then you have all of the originals. And you can’t beat the originals, right? You might even have different versions of the originals, from the Anthology release, to the RCA and Sony releases. And any self-respecting compilation album of great film music (especially those with a science fiction bent) will have versions of these famous cues on them. But is there an album that could be considered the ultimate in Star Wars compilations? Well, for the original trilogy at least, there is. And it’s Sony Classical’s first ever Star Wars album released way back in 1990.

     The Star Wars Trilogy consists of John Williams’ concert suite arrangements of his popular Star Wars music, recorded in 20 bit digital sound and on the Skywalker Sound scoring stages. The music here is vibrant, loud, and booming. Just the way it’s meant to be. Even if you know the music backwards and forwards and can spot every difference along the way, it’s still fun to pop this disc into a nice system and crank it up, allowing the orchestra to feel like it literally surrounds you.

     If the disc has any faults at all, they are relatively minor. The “Cantina Band” piece is recorded “live” and sounds very odd, not like the mixing and editing job done on the original. Additionally, “Here They Come” is performed slower than I would like, especially given the exciting performance found on a similar album from Varèse Sarabande that was conducted by Varujan Kojian.

     Small gripes aside, this is a stellar album and even if you already have multiple versions of the original scores, one to still consider adding to your collection.

See Also