complete score to Home Alone (1990), performed live to the film

The evening unfolds exactly as the movie does, with the orchestra replacing the film's own soundtrack in real time. Listen for the main theme, a bright, skipping tune first heard over the opening titles, built to suggest a child's excitement and mischief rather than danger. As the McCallister family scrambles before their trip to Paris, the music mirrors the chaos with quick, scurrying figures in the strings and winds. Once Kevin is left alone, the score turns warmer and more spacious, giving his exploration of the empty house a sense of wonder, including a hushed, almost hymn-like passage when he wanders into a church and hears a choir, "Somewhere in My Memory." The comic cat-and-mouse battle with the two burglars is scored with exaggerated swings between playful bassoon and brass outbursts and moments of mock suspense, timed note for note to the pratfalls on screen. Sleigh bells, choir, and richly orchestrated carols mark the Christmas setting throughout, culminating in a full choral treatment of the main theme as the family reunites. Because the orchestra is following a fixed film track, there are no breaks for applause within reels, and the music never stops for long, moving fluidly between underscore and the holiday songs woven into the story.

John Williams wrote the score for "Home Alone" in 1990 for director Chris Columbus's family comedy, his first of several collaborations with Columbus. The film paired Williams's music with the original songs "Somewhere in My Memory" and "Star of Bethlehem," both written for the picture, and the soundtrack became one of Williams's best known outside the concert hall. In recent years, studios have licensed "film with live orchestra" presentations of many Williams scores, removing the original recorded music track and inviting symphony orchestras to perform it live while the movie plays on a screen above them. These performances let audiences experience a familiar film as a shared concert event, with the orchestra taking the place of the studio recording heard in theaters and on home video since 1990.