John Williams wrote his first Piano Concerto at age 93.

rsl12

At age 93, the five-time Oscar winner—best-known for scoring blockbuster franchises such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Jaws and Jurassic Park—has written his first-ever piano concerto.

The piece, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, premiered on July 26 at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in Lenox, Massachusetts. Acclaimed classical pianist Emanuel Ax, for whom the piece was written, performed it with the orchestra, which was conducted by Andris Nelsons.

When [Ax] first saw the concerto, “I didn’t know what to expect, so I was generally amazed,” Ax told WCRB’s Brian McCreath ahead of the premiere. “It was wonderful to be able to spend time with this incredible man. He’s, aside from his genius, one could say, he’s also the warmest, kindest, most generous person one can imagine.”

The composition’s three movements offer subtle homages to iconic jazz pianists—Art Tatum, Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson—who were major influences on Williams as a young musician. The Times reports that Williams’ “first serious composition” was a piano sonata he attempted at age 18. But throughout his prolific career, he never wrote a piano concerto until now.

It's interesting--I don't think I could identify this as a John Williams composition just from hearing it, but I hear traces of his style in it. He's clearly less interested in pleasing the masses compared to his film music, so I feel like I'm hearing what his true musical tastes are.

ShiroKuro

rsl12 Oh cool! I'll have to listen later, but I hadn't heard about it, so thanks for posting this!

Ornstein

Really cool concerto, I heard some Prokofiev sonatas in there. I like the shift from dissonant into more melodic sections. Very rousing/swashbuckling orchestral section at one point too.

rsl12

Ornstein like the shift from dissonant into more melodic sections. Very rousing/swashbuckling orchestral section at one point too.

I hear the mix too, something like mature Scriabin and something from an action movie. Are there repeated themes in this work? I tried to identify some, and couldn't.

The three movements are supposed to be subtle homages to Art Tatum, Bill Evans, and Oscar Peterson, but at best, all I hear is their slight influence. Maybe the connections were more meaningful to his composing process than it is for the listener.

I've listened twice so far, and I'm still not "getting" it. But it's John Williams, so I'm going to give him more listens and see if I can crack it. He's good at making earworms, so I would be very surprised if there wasn't a single motif to hook the listener.

Ornstein

The classical influences are more clear to me than the jazz ones though I'm not too familiar with the jazz pianists' styles, besides Bill Evans a bit but not sure I hear too much of him. Maybe they're in the virtuosic soloing and not specific chord voicings and favored harmonies. There's a cool verbatim Kapustin lick from his 5th concert etude and one of his sonatas with the parallel scale-ish fingerwork, like a bebopified Chopin 2nd sonata 4rth movement kind of.

I think you're onto something about this 'tour' of ideas kind of structure. I heard the Mason Bates concerto played by Daniil Trifonov over the radio not too long back and thought it was a similar, though not as dissonant approach, to William's concerto. The concept of that was to go through some aesthetic eras or genres of America's culture like the Western, kind of like William idea of traversing these inspirations.