When John Williams scored Star Wars, he changed film music: the trend towards pop-orientated soundtracks which was gripping virtually every type of film gradually started to peter out, and composers like Elmer Bernstein and John Barry, who had been accepting increasingly dire assignments just to get work, suddenly saw their stars rising again. A new era of orchestral film scoring began, and James Horner and others launched their careers off the back of it. For that, Williams deserves the highest praise. And not only that, he wrote a fantastic score in the process. Three years later, he wrote one just as good for The Empire Strikes Back. Return of the Jedi, in 1983, was distinctly inferior, as George Lucas seemingly abandoned his good storytelling ideals for a marketing extravaganza, which spilled over into Williams's over-calculated music. Since then, Williams has generally steered clear of this type of family film, the occasional Steven Spielberg project not withstanding. It was with fascination that people approached his music for the new Star Wars movie, The Phantom Menace. Would he be able to recapture the style he so obviously abandoned so long ago? Or would we get something in his newer, much more streamlined style?

The answer lies somewhere in between. There are far fewer action showcases than in the previous Star Wars movies, and the score also appears to rely on the use of leitmotifs much less - the familiar themes appear only very sparingly, and the two new themes, "Duel of the Fates" and "Anakin's Theme", only two or three times each, and then only in very fragmented form.

These two new themes are, in fact, both excellent, though far less memorable than Williams's efforts in the previous trilogy. "Duel of the Fates" is a fantastically dark piece apparently based around the music for a lightsaber duel that sounds almost like Nixon-with-a-choir. The choral moments here are particularly epic-sounding. "Anakin's Theme", on the other hand, is a very delicate piece that ultimately reveals itself to be a menacingly innocent forerunner to "The Imperial March". This is a very clever touch on Williams's part. The piece actually contains an incredible amount of anguish, and while it's difficult to recall after it finishes, is still superb.

The disc opens, of course, with the classic Star Wars theme (with slightly more prominent percussion than previously) in a blistering performance, followed by "The Arrival at Naboo", an excellent section. "Jar Jar's Introduction and The Swim to Otoh Gunga" begins with some vaguely comic material before moving on to music that sounds for all the world like one of the secondary motifs from Seven Years in Tibet. The first action blow-out of the score is the almost Goldsmithian "The Droid Battle", a fantastic (if short) piece.

"The Flag Parade" is the next highlight, and for me is the best track on the score. It is clearly a tip-of-the-hat to Miklós Rózsa's "Parade of the Charioteers" from Ben-Hur, and actually quotes a short passage from the earlier, classic piece. "Anakin Defeats Sebulba" begins with the first glimpse of one of the previous themes since the opening title, as the Force theme makes its first appearance, albeit rather briefly. The track moves on to present more Rózsa-esque brass writing and then some typical Williams action music in another thrilling cue.

"Panaka and the Queen's Protectors" is wonderful; it has an almost Hook-like playfulness about it, and full orchestra performance of the "Duel of the Fates" theme towards the beginning is terrific. "The Appearance of Darth Maul" introduces another old favourite, Palpatine's Theme, with the growling male chorus giving their all. "Qui-Gon's Noble End" has an interesting effect, as the choir starts to whisper the lyrics from "Duel of the Fates"; this would be all well and good if I didn't keep expecting them to whisper "Sanguis bibimus" or "Versus christus". "The High Council Meeting" includes the one and only appearance of Yoda's Theme, followed by a very brief quote from The Imperial March, and is immediately followed by the exceptional "Qui-Gon's Funeral", including another brief quote from the Force Theme surrounded by a wonderful choral piece. This would make an excellent end to the score...

...but, instead, we get "Augie's Great Municipal Band". Please excuse me while I drown some kittens. The Ewok music in Return of the Jedi was very annoying; but I'd rather listen to 24-hour continual Ewok music than the 90 seconds of Municipal Band music. It opens with a horrible synth noise (think Jerry Goldsmith on a bad day in 1986) that runs through the piece, but just as bad is the "Ya ya" children's chorus. The music they are singing is actually a slightly-altered version of Palpatine's Theme, which is a very clever thought on Williams's part; if only he'd found more attractive surroundings to put it in.

The End Title seems very lazy - after the expected reprise of the main theme and then the Rebel Fanfare, all we get are exact replicas of both of the concert arrangements from earlier in the score. When there's over an hour of music missing from the release, it seems such a shame that the powers that be decided to include so much music repeated verbatim. This also means that the score ends with the ominous tones of the end of Anakin's Theme (actually the last four notes of the Imperial March), leaving on a completely different tone from any of the previous Star Wars movies.

One major worry I had had was that Shawn Murphy's recording of the score would be too bland - part of the reason the original trilogy sounds so good is Eric Tomlinson's excellent recording. Fortunately, Murphy has proved himself to be up to the task and, combined with the London Symphony Orchestra's exceptional performance of difficult music, this disc couldn't possibly sound any better.

But it could be sequenced better. The decision was taken to present the score not in film order, but re-arranged to provide a more complete listening experience. Unfortunately, the sequence of tracks just doesn't seem to gel very well. It also doesn't help that so much music was left off the CD (though a second volume seems inevitable). The music of Star Wars films, more than any other, actually tells the story as you are listening to the CD, but that simply isn't true here because of the way the tracks are arranged. This is probably the most disappointing aspect of the release.

This is nowhere near as good as either Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back, though is probably somewhat better than Return of the Jedi. There's probably 50 minutes of great music here, but 25 minutes of uninteresting stuff along the way too, and combined with the poor sequencing this leaves more than a slight twinge of disappointment. Perhaps, though, it was inevitable, given the dreadful film it was written for (lightyears behind even Return of the Jedi and the last-minute edited George Lucas was doing. Sony Classical inevitably followed up this release with a double CD set, containing all the music edits as heard in the film. Whoever thought that was a good idea is presumably still in kindergarten.

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