Star Wars - The Phantom Menace (Suite for Orchestra) - Deluxe Score
Suite for Orchestra Deluxe Score
By John Williams

this score is awesome and i will say it is complex.

I bought this for 'Duel of the Fates' which is far more complex than I thought (and I thought it was complex to begin with) I found the alternate brass cues easy to distinguish from the regular recorded version as it is marked clearly. As others have said, there are...

some printing problems, most obvious is the trombone section for 'The Adventures of Jar Jar' which unfortunately is a section carried almost exclusively by the trombones - hence only a 4 star rating.

Okay, sorry about that, but I'm in such a giddy mood after having received this score! After having seen "Star Wars In Concert" I have been on a huge Star Wars kick. During the concert, they actually played 3 out of these 4 movements. During the concert I recognized...

that "The Flag Parade" was not the one on the soundtrack, which actually kind of excited me. So when I read Elon's review that said the score doesn't follow the CD, I figured that this was the cue I heard in concert. Sure enough it was, and I had no trouble finding a recording on iTunes to follow along with the score. The same holds true for the "Adventures of Jar Jar" cue. It is absolutely amazing to me to read this music and see the orchestrations that Williams and his orchestrators wrote! I LOVE IT!!!

I was probably most looking forward to reading on 'Duel of the Fates' when recieving this score. I'd always wanted to study the orchestration of that one. and BOY is it complicated. there are many alternative cues gived to the brass, in case of the absence of the chorus...

. These alt.cues create so much clutter on the page, that it's almost overwhelming. Still, it does give a note for note description of the piece. 'Anakins theme' is nice too, and note for note, but the other two pieces 'The flag parade', and the 'Adventures of Jar Jar' are concert arrangements which are quite useless to those who want to listen along. They seem like great arrangements, but I can't find a recorded performance of them anywhere. At least I've got Duel of the Fates. That was only just worth the exorbidant US$75.

I loved playing this last year. Well worth checking out.