This is a good season for John Williams’ concert music, at least where I live. I’m not talking about his film scores, which are likely being listened to somewhere in the world every day. I’m talking about his concertos, of which he has composed many, beginning with the Flute Concerto of 1969. My personal favorites are his first Violin Concerto (in its original version of 1974-76), the bassoon concerto “Five Sacred Trees” (1995), the Cello Concerto (1994; still undecided between the original and revised versions), and the Trumpet Concerto (1996).

I’ve been lucky enough to attend performances of the revised Violin Concerto, the Cello Concerto (in both versions), and Violin Concerto No. 2 (2021) on concerts of the Philadelphia Orchestra. However, the first one I ever actually heard was on the radio, when the Tuba Concerto (1985) was included on a broadcast of the Cleveland Orchestra. Somehow, over 40 years later, I have never heard it live.

This is perhaps the most immediately appealing of Williams’ concertos for those who enjoy his film scores. The first movement, especially, shares some of the wide-open exuberance of, for instance, the lighter moments in “Jaws.” So it is with some pleasure that I look forward to finally hearing it on Friday afternoon on a concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra, with principal tubist Carol Jantsch.

The performance will take place at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Also on the program will be Julius Eastman’s Symphony No. 2 and Felix Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony. Dalia Stasevska will conduct.

Friday afternoon no good for you? The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00. The Tuba Concerto and “Italian” Symphony will also be performed, without the Eastman, as part of the orchestra’s Happy Hour Concert series on Thursday at 6:30. Get there at 5:00 for pre-concert specials on food and drink and free activities. Happy Hour concerts are followed by post-concert talks with the artists.

I’m also locked in for Williams’ new Piano Concerto, given its premiere this past summer at Tanglewood. Soloist Emanuel Ax will be bringing it to the New York Philharmonic for four performances at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, February 7-March 3. Also on the program will be Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” and Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Symphony 5. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will conduct.

As a little cherry on top, I hold a ticket to a Philadelphia Orchestra concert on May 1 that will open with a suite from Williams’ “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” I don’t generally like Williams’ arrangements of his film scores for the concert hall. There are exceptions, but I don’t think he’s always the best at distilling what makes his movie music so magical, beyond the recognizable themes, and translating it for use on symphony concerts. This is frustrating, because the music is excellent, as it was written, and I do wish it could be worked into something more along the lines of “The Firebird Suite.” A lot could be done with 20 minutes. Williams takes 10.

Anyway, it’s on the same program with Aaron Copland’s Symphony No.3 and, in between, Matthias Pintscher’s “Assonanza” for Violin and Orchestra. Leila Josefowicz will be the soloist, and Pintscher himself will conduct. There will be three performances, April 30-May 2.

I am only in the last 35 pages or so of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion,” which I picked up dutifully to honor the 250th anniversary of her birth. I really want to knock it out today, because I’m dying to start the new John Williams biography by Tim Greiving, a 640-page doorstep issued by Oxford University Press.

February 8 will mark the composer’s 94th birthday. Williams is said to be at work on the score for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming extraterrestrial opus “Disclosure Day,” which has been slated for a June 12 opening.