{"id":13030,"date":"2020-08-18T22:28:29","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T22:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jwfan.com\/?p=13030"},"modified":"2024-02-18T16:44:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-18T16:44:13","slug":"jwfan-reviews-john-williams-in-vienna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwfan.com\/?p=13030","title":{"rendered":"JWFan Reviews ‘John Williams in Vienna’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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John Williams in Vienna<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Review by Mikko Ojala<\/b><\/p>\n

Composer John Williams keeps himself busy. Though his film projects seem to be few and far between these days, the 88-year-old Maestro seems to be working as hard as he ever has. Now in 2020 he is busy writing another violin concerto, this time for Anne-Sophie Mutter, and earlier this year he managed to cross a significant boundary between the film and classical music worlds by at long last making his conducting debut with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the renowned violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in two concerts on January 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup>.<\/a> He conducted a programme of his own film music to packed seats in one of the shrines of the classical music world, the famous Viennese Musikverein concert house, and to commemorate this event, these historic concerts were also recorded and filmed by the Deutsche Grammophon label and have now been released on both CD and Blu-ray.<\/p>\n

This review will cover the regular CD release, which contains a selections from the concert, a generous 74-minute programme, which includes a broad collection of classics from Williams\u2019 concert repertoire, old and new. The separate Deluxe release includes both this CD and a Blu-ray which presents the whole concert in its entirety.<\/p>\n

The CD commences with a staple Williams concert opener, the energetic and bouncy Flight to Neverland<\/i> from Hook<\/i>, which immediately showcases the whole orchestra but especially the powerful brass section which is certainly put to the test during the rest of the concert.<\/p>\n

Next comes a slightly shortened version of another Williams classic, the Excerpts from Close Encounters of the Third Kind,<\/i> that so deftly combines both the more challenging avant-garde orchestral bursts and rumbles with the melodic heavenly 5-notes motif finale into a brilliant summation of the score\u2019s two sides and is here performed truly resoundingly by the Vienna Philharmonic. The orchestra\u2019s response is similarly strong later in Adventures on Earth<\/i> from E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial<\/i>, with its majestically soaring poignant finale, all augmented by the spacious acoustics of the concert hall.<\/p>\n

While violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter lent her considerable skills to several pieces during the concerts (the CD release alas features only two), I am happy to say that the one included here, a brand new arrangement of the sprightly dance macabre of Devil\u2019s Dance<\/i> from The Witches of Eastwick,<\/i> is one of the highlights of the album. Like all the pieces on the Williams\/Mutter collaboration 2019 album Across the Stars, <\/i>this also is another complete reworking of the theme specifically for solo violin and orchestra. Here Mutter\u2019s violin is cast in the role of a scratchy witch\u2019s fiddle that spurs the orchestra into a devilish frenzied dance with both a terrific extended opening and cadenza for the violin, and I feel that Williams has found a great balance between the more showy solo sections and the orchestral accompaniment. This is a wonderful fresh new take on the old piece not to mention a world premiere recording of this arrangement Williams wrote specifically for Mutter!<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8bPzIG3IlKM\n

Theme from Jurassic Park<\/i> is another fan favourite and Williams\u2019 instinct has always been to conduct it a bit faster compared to its film counterpart, especially the opening part with the hymn-like theme, which I feel robs it of some of its majesty, and he also does so here, but it has to be said that the opulent, expansive sound that the orchestra creates more than makes up for it. A more recent example of Williams\u2019 superb gift for melody and evoking time and place is Dartmoor, 1912<\/i> from War Horse<\/i> that opens with a beautifully played bucolic flute solo that proceeds into a suite which feels very much part English, part Americana in its evocations of pastoral scenes with special mention going to a gorgeous pronounced brass chorale in the midsection of the suite where once again the brass section of the Vienna Philharmonic is allowed to shine. The piece ends in a heartfelt and very English sounding hymn theme which the string section performs with such poignant warmth before another extended lovely, reflective flute coda.<\/p>\n