Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

This is a film-with-live-orchestra event: the movie is shown on a large screen exactly as it appears in theaters, but with the dialogue, sound effects and picture intact while the orchestra performs Williams's music live in sync, replacing the recorded score track.

There is no concert-style movement structure to listen for, since the music follows the story rather than a fixed form. Even so, a few musical landmarks recur across the film. Williams reuses and expands his cheerful, bell-laden main theme from the original "Home Alone," now dressed up for New York City, with busier, more festive orchestration to match the sequel's bigger scale. Listen for warm, old-fashioned Christmas orchestral colors, sleigh bells, chimes and a children's choir, especially under the scenes of Kevin wandering wintry Manhattan and gazing at the tree at Rockefeller Center. The comic slapstick chase scenes late in the film bring fast, percussive, cartoonish writing full of quick woodwind runs and sudden orchestral jabs timed to pratfalls. Between the comedy, softer string passages underscore quieter, sentimental moments, including the reunion of Kevin's family. Because the orchestra plays to a fixed film timing, the performance requires exact ensemble precision, so listen for how tightly the music locks to the action on screen.

John Williams composed the score for "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York" in 1992, the sequel to his own 1990 score for "Home Alone," again for director Chris Columbus. The film reunited Williams with the same holiday setting and comic tone, giving him a chance to expand the earlier film's main theme into a bigger, New York-flavored sound, complete with choir and festive orchestration for the added Rockefeller Center and Manhattan scenes. The score was recorded with a full orchestra and released as a soundtrack album alongside the film's theatrical run in November 1992. In recent years, orchestras across the United States have presented the film in "live to picture" screenings, where the recorded score is removed from the film's audio track and replaced by a live orchestra playing in synchronization with the picture and remaining sound effects and dialogue.