GRAMOPHONE Review: John Williams Violin Concerto No 2 & Various – Mutter, Boston Symphony Orchestra/Williams
‘The Guv’nor’ of movie music is quick to acknowledge those who have inspired him – composers and performers alike – and these two new releases are as much a tribute to the creative impulses of his two closest musical soulmates as they are to the music they unlock in him.
John Williams’ Second Violin Concerto is essentially a portrait of Anne-Sophie Mutter and all the wild and wonderful things she can do with an instrument with whom she is at one. From the very first tentative solo of the piece – feeling its way into our consciousness (or so it seems) – an air of improvisation prevails. We know how much Williams loves jazz and it’s that spirit which permeates both the concertos featured on Mutter and Ma’s albums. There are adventures afoot – and not just in that galaxy far, far away but right here and now in the inventions (or so it seems) of the moment. Better yet, composer and performer feel, in the broadest sense, in complete alignment.
Dramatic gestures apart, don’t expect Williams, the master of movie magic and purveyor of luscious themes, simply to tender more of the same in these concertos. What he offers here is way more complex, way thornier. Both pieces are alive with ‘technique’ stretched to its limits. Mutter’s violin concerto is virtuosic and then some and as such there are stretches of music that you might not recognise as being by Williams at all. In that regard this is music that might not be as easy to love but is infectious by virtue of its creative energy, the sparks of interaction generated between player and composer and the gamesmanship it engenders.
In the slow movement of the violin concerto ‘Rounds’ the legendary Williams lyricist finds freer rein – searching and very beautiful – and there is renewal in the healing ‘Epilogue’ where somewhere at the back of one’s mind Mutter and Schindler’s List resonate. Paradoxically that particular theme – one of Williams’ loveliest and most enduring – is not included here but rather finds a deeper resonance in the cello of Yo-Yo Ma for whom Williams created a concert piece of three fragments from that Oscar-winning score. More on that anon.
For Mutter and the Boston Symphony Orchestra Williams offers concert pieces from one of the least familiar of his scores – The Long Goodbye – which lives up to its title in the very best sense – alongside Indiana Jones taking time out from thwarting Raiders of the Lost Ark with a bit of love interest and finally a side-trip to that far off galaxy where Hans Solo and Princess Leia canoodle to the lushest note spinning Williams can muster.
