GRAMOPHONE Review: John Williams ‘A Gathering of Friends’ Cello Concerto & Various – Yo-Yo Ma, New York Philharmonic Orchestra/Williams
‘A Gathering of Friends’ celebrates three decades of friendship between Williams and Yo-Yo Ma and features a radical revision of the Cello Concerto first conceived after their initial meeting through the Boston Pops Orchestra. For this new recording the New York Philharmonic does the honours. First impressions: it seems to me very Waltonesque (if with an American accent) – and I know for sure that Williams would be flattered by the observation. The leading melody of the first movement is very sensuous and exotic – a hothouse specimen such as one finds in Walton’s own Cello Concerto (and his Violin and Viola concertos) – and the dislocated jazziness of the scherzo is possessed of that slightly rebellious quality found in all free spirits. Needless to say it becomes an indomitable force in the cadenza where Ma really digs in. But then again the illicit sighs of the ‘Blues’ movement run deep and the closing ‘Song’ seems to come full circle in the spirit of improvisation with Ma suggesting that he not Williams might be making it up as he goes along. Only the great ones can do that.
And so back to the movies with the unforgettable Schindler. We know and love the theme but its songfulness is if anything intensified with the dusky resonances of the cello. The second fragment ‘Krakow Ghetto’ is a mournful Jewish dance morphing into something gruff and defiant and ‘Remembrances’ – soulful and radiant – makes something hopeful of painful memories with just a glimmer of the beloved Schindler theme at the close.
The oration from Lincoln – ‘With Malice Toward None’ in an arrangement for cello and strings – is one of those aspirational tunes (seemingly effortless for Williams) that Americans live to embrace and lower key but no less resonant or meaningful in reach is the arrangement for cello and guitar (Pablo Sainz-Villegas) of the ‘Prayer for Peace’ from Munich.
Most intriguing of all, though, is Highwood’s Ghost (2018) which Williams wrote in memory of Leonard Bernstein in his centennial year and which invokes his indomitable spirit and that of the Tanglewood Music Festival with reference to yet another indomitable spirit – a ghost said to inhabit Highwood Manor House on the grounds of the festival which Bernstein claimed personally to have encountered. This ‘confrontation’ is spookily realised through the dulcet tones of Lenny as reincarnated in the voice of the Ma’s cello and a startling apparition of ear-popping virtuosity from solo harp (Jessica Zhou). More startling, though, to my ears is the fleeting allusion to Britten’s Peter Grimes which Bernstein conducted the American premiere of there in 1946.
Another great example of how Williams’ points of reference reach far and wide and wider still.
