Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Suite for Orchestra Deluxe Score

By John Williams

This suite consists of 5 mvnts, intertwining key thematic cues. The first mvnt "Witches wands and wizards" opens with the "Quiditch third year" fanfare from the soundtrack. It contains cues such as "Chasing Scabbers,Hagrid's Friendly bird and the snowball fight. Mvnt 2, Aunt Marge's Waltz is note...

for note on the soundtrack recording. 3rd mvnt ,The knight bus begins at the fast Jazzy section which is almost note for note however it does have some extended transitional material which has been added throughout the middle. It also has extra material added to the end, contrasting with the next mvnt "A bridge to the past" which is based heavily on material from "A window to the past" from the soundtrack. Last mvnt "double trouble" is a complete orchestral rework which has been dramatically extended to fit the orchestra's combined instrumentation. This suite is very entertaining to read and listen to. Well worth the money.

I looked very forward to getting this score, but was a bit disappointed upon further examination of it. The piece in the suite 'Witches, Wands, and Wizards', is a gluing together of many of the action cues in the film. However, 'Buckbeak's flight' has been left out, and some...

unrecognisable cues are put in. Quite annoying. As for the other pieces, 'Aunt Marge's Waltz', and 'The Knight Bus' are fun pieces, and are essentially note for note, though slightly changed in places. I was quite annoyed with 'A [Bridge] to the Past', and 'Double Trouble'. They are complete reworkings of the original arrangement, no doubt in order to eliminate the baroque style instruments (e.g. recorder, harspichord), which made the pieces so intruguing in the first place, and to be replaced by standard instruments. Therefore these two pieces in the score are useless to me, since hearing these versions seems like a very slim chance indeed therefore, only 3 stars for what would usually be a 5 star product.

To start, this H. Potter suite has 5 songs that contrast each other in style, but the 1st song titled 'Witches, Wands & Wizards'is very dramatic, with a pizz. strings section that's whimsical in the middle of the song which is not a dark section dramatically. Now the 1st...

3 minutes or so of the song reminded me of the dramatic music of 'Star Wars'-'The Empire Strikes Back' in this Star Wars film's 1st Song named 'The Main Title'. 3 of the other songs in this Potter suite are good and just happy through out these entire songs, and the last song of this suite's 5 songs is supposed to be a jazz song, but I haven't had a chance to hear this song, yet.