Despite the more critical film music fans' suggestion that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (just why did they change it to Sorcerer's Stone? Do they think American audiences are that dumb? - no comment) wasn't very original, the ubiquitous Hedwig's Theme has happily entered into public consciousness just like Williams' themes for Star Wars, ET and Indiana Jones have done. I'm sure the level of exposure helps, but Williams' theme captures the spirit of Potter's world and stories as expertly as any of his other themes. For part two, Williams didn't have quite enough time to write the entire score and so William Ross was brought in to adapt Williams' music for the remaining scenes. Listening to the album, which presumably contains most, if not all, of Williams' work, it's fairly difficult to tell who did what. I would suggest that anything that's just an arrangement of the old themes is Ross and anything with new material is original Williams.
There are, of course, a couple of new themes, although neither is hugely special. The most important new melody is for Fawkes the Phoenix who gets a sweeping, lilting melody that sounds a fraction like imitation John Williams even though I'm sure it's the real thing. It's just a bit simplistic and harmonically uninteresting, even though it is admittedly quite lovely. Kenneth Branagh's Gilderoy Lockhart seems to have escaped from the scene in The Last Crusade where Indy throws someone out of an airship window for lack of a ticket. Just a bit too similar to a past effort I feel. The score is almost what you'd expect, there is a light comedic flavour for Dobby the House Elf (this year's Jar Jar Binks CGI hate figure), a bit of mystery for the Chamber itself which gets quite thunderous in the second track and of course some action. The Spiders and Dueling the Basilisk are the highlights, both reaching speaker shattering proportions with choir and orchestra seemingly fighting for supremacy. This is not subtle stuff. Harry's Wondrous World this time closes the score, with a slightly amended, more bombastic finale.
Given George Lucas' placing of some of the Phantom Menace cues in Attack of the Clones and some adaptation from the original Harry Potter here, one does get the impression that Williams isn't perhaps as interested in fantasy as he once was. He certainly plays safe with Potter and while Attack of the Clones wasn't exactly cutting edge, it certainly had more invention than is displayed here. Taken on its own terms, Chamber of Secrets is just as enjoyable as the Philosopher's Stone given the greater variety of themes, but suffers from lack of novelty and too much re-hashing, although the way it was written probably didn't help. If you enjoyed the first, here's more of the same.
Rating ~ 
Total Time ~ 70:21