Review: At 93, John Williams Unveils His First Piano Concerto

New York Times

2 days ago

You could be forgiven for expecting the Boston Symphony Orchestra's concert on Saturday to be an evening of cinematic grandeur.
At the top of the program was a premiere by John Williams, master of the old-school movie soundtrack, who for the past half-century has written brassy, memorable themes for blockbuster franchises like 'Star Wars,' 'Indiana Jones' and 'Jurassic Park.'
It made sense that his first piano concerto, which premiered on Saturday at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony's summer home in the Berkshires, would be paired with Mahler's First Symphony, a dramatically expansive view of nature and heroism.
But the two pieces couldn't be more different.
The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Williams's first at 93, is rooted in moods rather than big themes, or even a big sound. It comes less from the tunesmith mind behind the feather-light mischief of 'Harry Potter' and the unforgettable terror of 'Jaws,' and more from his parallel career as a composer for the concert stage. In that realm, his music is often subtler, and sometimes spikier, while just as skillful in its craft.
With a running time of roughly 20 minutes, the concerto looks traditional at first glance: three movements, in the classic order of fast-slow-fast. (It will be performed by the New York Philharmonic next season, as well as the Boston Symphony again, with a recording by Deutsche Grammophon on the way.) Most Williams-esque is the enormous orchestra, which in film he has used to reach for the heavens of 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial' and conjure the solemn, stirring past of 'Lincoln.'
As the concerto unfolded, conducted with traffic-guard control by Andris Nelsons, the Boston Symphony's music director, it became clear that the orchestration was mostly just for show. This is a work of extreme virtuosity, dispatched with cool ease by its soloist, Emanuel Ax, but also of restraint. Despite its traditional appearance, it's more like a triptych than a work of broadly conceived architecture, episodic and hauntingly atmospheric; passages emerge from silence, run their course and gently depart before new ideas take their place.
Directions in the score suggest each movement is a portrait of a jazz pianist: Art Tatum, Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson. But the references are so oblique, more tone setters than specific homages, a listener doesn't need to know that beforehand. Perhaps it's best to go into this new concerto without a clichéd idea of Williams's sound, too. He is, beyond his 50-plus Academy Award nominations and Hollywood fame, one of the most well-rounded musicians alive, a chameleonic composer and conductor, especially of the Boston Pops from 1980 to 1993. Even his film scores reflect a greater range than his reputation would suggest. For every 'Superman' there is also a softly elegiac 'Schindler's List' or 'Memoirs of a Geisha.'
Most relevant to the new concerto may be 'Catch Me if You Can,' whose jazzy score has a slithering, freewheeling sensibility to match Steven Spielberg's seductive view of the 1960s.
There's a freedom, too, in the concerto's opening. On Saturday, Ax played three chiming chords that quickly returned with a wave of extra notes, followed by a rush of virtuosity. The piece wasted no time, like a pop song that starts with the chorus. Ax had a lot of wiggle room, encouraged by the score's directions like 'a piacere' ('at your pleasure') and 'take time' to approach the precise notation with looseness. When other instruments join in, they mainly serve as support; this is a concerto that spotlights its soloist more than it integrates it with the ensemble.
Another soloist opens the second movement, though: the Boston Symphony's principal viola, Steven Ansell, with discursive, almost improvisatory lyricism. The piano joins for a dreamy duet, and entire pages go by with almost the whole orchestra at rest. That is, until the finale, which storms in with the angular boogie-woogie of Stravinsky's Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra.
As is often the case with Williams's concert works, musical ideas tend to be strung together without a flowing sense of purpose. Passages have neat divisions rather than transitions, like with the cues of a soundtrack; they fascinate in the moment, but not in the aggregate.
Still, this concerto wins over its audience by the end. The strings let out runs and punchy bursts, and a muted trombone melts with glissandos, all while the pianist races to the big chords of the finish line. That may be the most traditional thing about this piece, a satisfying signal to start clapping.
Which is what happened on Saturday, and the applause rose to cheers as well when Williams appeared onstage in a wheelchair. This response was touching; his relationship with the Tanglewood audience reaches so far back that he has provided musical joy to several generations of fans there.
And while it may have taken until his 90s, he had given them a piano concerto. They welcomed it with roars, even as Williams held his hands together and rested his head on them, gesturing that it was time for bed.
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Performed on Saturday at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass.