The Philharmonic marked this Yuletide season with a screening of Chris Columbus’s 1990 comedy, Home Alone, accompanied by John Williams’s Oscar-nominated score telling the story of eight-year-old Kevin McCallister, who defends himself and his home against a pair of bungling burglars when his family jets off to Paris and mistakenly leaves him behind. Although the score manages to capture the spirit of the season along with the varied emotions of Kevin’s incredible adventure, the orchestra does not get much playing time; relatively brief musical passages are sprinkled here and there. The musicians merely sat quietly waiting for their next cue. However, when they did jump in, they offered some splendidly memorable moments.
For this, the second of four performances, Constantine Kitsopoulos elicited an energetic account – frenetic and fast-paced during the family’s race to catch their plane, wily and menacing when it introduces the blundering ‘Wet Bandits’, perky and boisterous when Kevin starts to take charge of his home, energetic and rhythmic as he prepares the house for the burglars’ arrival, and intensely dramatic during the lengthy attack on the house.
An especially notable musical moment was the pivotal sequence where Kevin ducks into a church and a children’s choir sings ‘Carol of the Bells’ and ‘O Holy Night’ as a backdrop to his heartfelt conversation with his neighbor, Old Man Marley. Performing Williams’s arrangements of the carols, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus was perfectly synched with the voices of the film’s choir, adding haunting beauty and spiritual calm to the tremendously moving scene.
In addition to music by Williams, the soundtrack makes use of recorded excerpts from songs such as The Drifters’ doo-wop version of ‘White Christmas’ (which Kevin mouth-synchs in front of a bathroom mirror) and Southside Johnny Lyon’s rock-infused ‘Please Come Home for Christmas’. Mel Tormé’s smooth, jazz inflected ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, heard while Kevin prepares the house for the attack by the burglars, emphasizes the reality of the child’s isolation.
But the jewel of the soundtrack is Williams’s Academy-Award-nominated song, ‘Somewhere in My Memory’, whose theme represents Kevin’s longing for his family. First heard in a bare-bones, music-box version during the opening credits, it underscores many poignant sequences, reaching an emotional peak in the warm, sweeping orchestral strains played when Kevin’s mother finally returns home, and during the closing titles, the choir singing the full version created a wonderfully joyful Christmas feeling.
