Yesterday, I made a last-minute decision to catch John Williams in Philadelphia. Having seen him three times before (four, actually, as once he came out to acknowledge an ovation, following a performance of one of his concertos, the night after he conducted a program of his own music), I had resigned myself to sitting this one out. When the concert was announced, I went to the Philadelphia Orchestra website, and instead of being able to buy tickets, there were instructions to email for information. Forget that. But when I went back yesterday, after many months, there were a handful of seats posted, so I got out my credit card and jumped through the usual hoops to reserve one.
I have been reluctant to attend concerts since Covid-19, and with Williams, I knew the hall would be packed, but I lucked into a box seat with three other people, so we were elevated slightly, above the main floor, and the chairs were positioned in such a way that there was little chance of us breathing on one another. Everyone was masked, of course, and proof of vaccination was required. My seat was the equivalent of twelve rows from the stage, maybe 35 or 40 feet from the podium, with a great sightline.
The emotional high point of the evening came at the very beginning, when Williams emerged to a rafter-rattling standing ovation. At 90 years-old, he is a marvel. If not for his evident care when walking back and forth to the podium (I did see him fall once in Baltimore a number of years ago), I’d say he hasn’t changed a bit in the last 20 years. He did not conduct from a chair, as many superannuated maestros do, but led the entire two-hours-plus standing. He did lean on concertmaster David Kim’s shoulder a few times when getting on and off the podium.
Anne-Sophie Mutter joined him as soloist in his brand new Violin Concerto No. 2 (given its premiere at Tanglewood in July), which they have been touring, with another performance scheduled for Carnegie Hall tomorrow night. This is probably the third time I’ve heard the piece – having seen the debut on PBS and listened to a bootleg on YouTube – and I hear more in it every time. Like most of Williams’ concertos, it has little in common with his film work, beyond a shared expertise in the handling of the instrumental colors. Everyone remembers the big moments in his film scores, but there’s real magic in the connective material. When required, Williams does delicacy as well as any frontal assault. Although I imagine Mutter knows the concerto pretty well by now (it was written for her), she played it from the score.
Audiences at these kinds of events are not necessarily classical music people – the guy next to me commented that he had never attended the Philadelphia Orchestra before – but everyone listened attentively, or at any rate patiently, knowing the programming on the second half of the concert was calculated to please. I do hope, after all these performances of the work, that one of the major labels (Deutsche Grammophon?) will allow Mutter and Williams to record it. Record companies don’t exactly stumble over themselves to finance recordings of Williams’ concert music.
The first half of the concert opened with a brief occasional piece, “Sound the Bells,” written to celebrate the royal wedding of Crown Prince (now Emperor) Naruhito and Masko Owada of Japan. Following the concerto, Mutter played an encore, “Across the Stars,” in an arrangement for violin and orchestra, from “Attack of the Clones.” Addressing the audience, Williams played coy, stating it was from one of the nine “Star Wars” scores, but he didn’t remember which one; he hadn’t had a chance to look it up. I find that doubtful, since he made the same quip at the Tanglewood concert, when it was also played as an encore to the concerto.
This was not the last we would hear from Mutter. Following intermission, there were selections from “Hook” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Then Mutter returned to play some new arrangements, also written for her, of selections from “Harry Potter,” “Cinderella Liberty,” and “The Adventures of Tintin.” These were played very well, of course – Mutter is one the world’s great violinists – but, while I don’t begrudge other’s enjoyment of this sort of “easy listening” approach to film music, personally I always find it to be a little kitschy.
Williams did give a nice shout-out to André Previn, whom he described as a lifelong friend. The two met in Hollywood, when Previn was a prolific, and Academy Award-decorated, film composer. Mutter was married to Previn from 2002 to 2006. Williams told how he asked Previn whether or not he thought Mutter, who is used to playing Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, would be able to grasp the jazzy idiom of “Cinderella Liberty.” Previn assured him, Williams said, that Anne-Sophie could play anything.
Williams also observed that he and Previn were probably the only two who remembered seeing “Cinderella Liberty,” which was released 50 years ago. It was one of several remarks on Williams’ part to stir melancholy reflections of my own, that time is passing at an alarming rate, and that Williams, at 90, is a toehold on a vanishing world. He even made an aside about Errol Flynn, “for those of you who remember who he is.” There may have been those in the audience who didn’t.
During intermission, the guy next to me had asked about Mutter. When I mentioned her marriage to Previn, I got the impression he had never heard of him. He certainly didn’t know “Bad Day at Black Rock,” “Elmer Gantry,” or “My Fair Lady.” He turned to me then, when Williams mentioned him, in acknowledgement. Time is passing very quickly indeed. When the orchestra launched into the Throne Room and End Title music from “Star Wars,” it seemed “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” and not just for the reasons originally intended.
Standing ovations punctuated the evening. The audience recalled Williams and Mutter again and again. I attended a Williams concert a few years ago, and the encores lengthened the program by nearly a third. Last night, we got “Schindler’s List” (with Mutter) and the flying theme from “E.T.” The audience was ruthless in its adoration. Williams was recalled multiple times, but after a lovely evening, the point had come when he should be allowed to go. He’s 90 years-old, people! At last, he put two hands together and held them to his cheek, as he always does, to signify that he was tired and it was time to get some sleep. And everyone laughed, as they always do.
I was happy to see the musicians so evidently gratified to be playing the music, and many of them were obviously star-struck in Williams’ presence. You could see it on their faces, especially of those whose hands he was able to shake. The personnel are now mostly of an age when they would have been reared, as I was, on Williams’ music. I was 10 at the time “Star Wars” was released. There was a lot of love in the room.
New to Williams’ repertoire was the fist-bump, of which he exchanged several with people in the front row of the audience. He also reacted to cries and whistles from the balconies. He’s an exceptionally gracious presence. I can’t believe for a moment that he doesn’t recognize how much his music has meant to so many, but he always conveys a modest, appreciative disposition. What a charmed career he’s had. There’s been plenty of hard work, to be sure, supported by an innate musicianship and a masterful command of technique. But the whole Lucas-Spielberg connection gave him an unprecedented opportunity to dream big and to reach the broadest possible audience. How many other composers, living or dead, have been so fortunate?
I don’t have a smart phone (Verizon keeps threatening to cancel my flip), so the image on this post was kindly shared with me by the gentleman next to me, with whom I had conversed a couple of times during the evening. So thank you to him!
By coincidence, I also wrote about Williams for my article in the current edition of the Princeton weekly newspaper U.S. 1, in connection with an all-Williams concert to be given by the Capital Philharmonic of New Jersey in Trenton in this Saturday. I’ll write a little more about that in a separate post later today.
