The latest installment of Harry Potter’s adventures is out on the big screens, and flying into record stores with it comes the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Soundtrack, with scores that seem to have matured as much as the young stars in the film.
Composed by the muliti-award-winning John
Williams (of Star
Wars and E.T.
fame), the soundtrack comprises new compositions as well as reprised
of familiar old Harry Potter themes, keeping with
the theme of the series, while still allowing the album to be recognised
as a masterpiece in its’ own right.
Though
not many people know this, the soundtrack of the first film, Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (also by John
Williams), was nominated for the Oscar
for Best Soundtrack in 2001, but it lost out to the
Lord
Of The Rings, which also debuted at the same time.
Unfortunately, the soundtrack released in 2002 for Harry
Potter and The Chamber of Secrets had none of the novelty
of the first soundtrack, and only one really good new score (Track
2: Fawkes The Phoenix), and thus was not even nominated.
However,
John Williams is back in form again with the
Prisoner of Azkaban. The music is much darker and more
foreboding than that of the first 2 films, while still retaining
that ethereal magical quality which made the Sorcerer’s Stone
soundtrack so successful.
In this 3rd film, as Harry Potter undergoes the emotional rite-of-passage to puberty, John Williams manages to capture the essence of the film’s deep underlying emotions in bittersweet melodies that are joyful, exhilarating, and melancholic all at once.
Even if you haven’t watched the movies and aren’t really
a fan of the books, you should still find this soundtrack enjoyable
as it’s really good orchestral music.
The best track on the album is Track 7: A Window To The Past, which accompanies the poignant scene between Professor Lupin (David Thewlis) and Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), where Lupin reveals to Harry what the Potters (Harry’s parents) were like. Truly haunting, one feels as if everything unsaid in the scene is in the music. Other excellent tracks are Track 6: Buckbeak’s Flight, and Track 20: Finale, which rounds up the emotional journey, completing it with fantastic gusto. If you like the Harry Potter music, but don’t like listening to hours of filler music, Track 21: Mischief Managed is probably the track for you – it’s a summary of the soundtrack’s main themes in just a little over 12 minutes.
The perfect companion to the motion picture, John Williams has produced a work so powerful that it is guaranteed to pull at least a heartstring or two.
