On Thursday, 22 August (beginning at 8.30 pm), as part of the 72nd Ljubljana Festival, Križanke will host a concert dedicated to the music of films we have grown up with. An Evening of Music by John Williams will be performed by the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra and National Philharmonic Choir under the direction of Nayden Todorov, a big fan of the Star Wars saga. 

Bachtrack’s 2021 round-up of classical music statistics saw John Williams reclaim the top spot as the world’s most performed living composer. British radio station Classic FM calls him “one of the greatest composers of classical music in history.” With an incredible 54 Oscar nominations to date (only Walt Disney, with 59, has more), he has more nods from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences than any other person alive, not to mention five Academy Awards for Best Original Score.

Over the course of his career, the American composer has also won 25 Grammy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards and four Golden Globes. Williams has created the music for nine of the 25 highest-grossing films of all time. He has frequently collaborated with director Steven Spielberg, succeeding time and again in conjuring up a unique cinematic experience, as well as with George Lucas.

He has composed some of the most iconic film scores ever written, whose music is familiar to every cinemagoer. He is responsible for the music of the Star Wars saga, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Jurassic Park series, three Harry Potter films, the Indiana Jones films, Home Alone, Superman, and countless other films. Among his career highlights are romantically infused compositions such as his scores for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

Williams’s scores for the Star Wars films are legendary. In 1977 his music for the first film in the saga won the Oscar for Best Original Score. He then brilliantly built on his work in all the successive instalments. Besides “Main Title (from Star Wars)”, perhaps his best-known piece is the “The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)” from The Empire Strikes Back, a work that wordlessly, through music alone, tells us everything we need to know about Darth Vader, the greatest film villain of all time.

The American Film Institute has chosen his orchestral theme for the first film in the Star Wars saga as the best film composition of all time. The entire second half of Thursday’s concert will be devoted to music from Star Wars, while the first half of the concert will feature music from other Williams-scored blockbusters. John Williams may, without exaggeration, be described as the greatest film composer of all time. His name will forever be written in golden letters in the history of the film industry.