I’m sorry, my Greek friend, but this is not even close. While Yanni has demonstrated ample talent for creating pleasing and popular instrumental music for the “new age” crowd, he is simply not in the same league as the great Vangelis. Beyond being an amazingly skilled musician, Vangelis is a superb composer, arranger and producer of works that people know and love, the world over. I’ve long regarded him as Greece’s greatest musical export; possibly their greatest export, period, since the Olympic Games.
You know me well enough already to know that I adore Vangelis’ exquisite soundtrack to the greatest sci-fi film ever made, Blade Runner. Even as I’ve watched the movie, I have listened to that soundtrack countless times. And just as I regard Ridley Scott’s masterpiece as the very template for sci-fi movies, so too is Vangelis’ emotive soundtrack a template for scoring a film. Vangelis captures the very melancholy of the dark and dreary, dystopian world Rick Deckard inhabits even as he taps into Deckard’s very soul. The music so perfectly complements the film as to make it impossible to imagine the one without the other. It is sublime.
Amazingly, Vangelis had already done the same with his prior soundtrack for the Oscar-winning film, Chariots of Fire. That opening theme is as iconic as any piece of music in cinematic history and he rightly won the Oscar for Best Original Music Score. He’s scored several other films as well, including The Bounty (a very underrated film) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and his frequent collaborations with Jon Anderson of Yes have also produced some memorable music over the years.
Vangelis wins this contest, hands down.