John Williams
Concerto for piano and orchestra John Williams Concerto for piano and orchestra

On 26 July 2025, the audience gave John Williams a standing ovation at the world premiere of his Piano Concerto in Tanglewood, performed by Emanuel Ax and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons. It is not the first concertante work by the five time Academy Award winner. Alongside his Hollywood career, the now 94 year old – who is often sceptical of his own film music – has written more than a dozen solo concertos, exploring sound worlds far removed from what we know from Star Wars, Harry Potter, Schindler’s List, or Indiana Jones. When the Millennium Falcon hurtles through an asteroid field or “Indy” is trapped inside a temple while searching for the Holy Grail, film audiences are hardly listening for complex counterpoint. In his atmospherically dense soundtracks, Williams relies on memorable melodies, striking rhythms, and rich harmonies. In his concert works, however, he adopts a more intricate and rugged musical language. He usually writes with a specific musician in mind – whether the harpist of the Boston Pops or international stars such as cellist Yo Yo Ma or the violinists Gil Shaham and Anne Sophie Mutter. And of course Emanuel Ax, who approached the composer about a piano concerto and told him: “If you write it, I will play it!”

After the Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra of 2014, this is John Williams’s first piano concerto in the traditional three movement form. Each movement is dedicated to a legendary jazz pianist: Art Tatum, Bill Evans, and Oscar Peterson. This is familiar ground for the composer: Williams’s father, John Williams Sr., played percussion in the Raymond Scott Quintet, while Williams himself worked as a jazz pianist in New York clubs during his studies at the Juilliard School. Nevertheless, Williams did not want to write “a jazz piece per se”, but rather a personal homage to three artists whose characteristic sound has fascinated him for decades. As a teenager, he watched Art Tatum begin performances by striking three chords and listening to them fade before unfolding his famous, lush, Rachmaninov like sonority. Williams’s Piano Concerto likewise begins with three reflective piano chords, from which the soloist seems to improvise freely. The pianist must then assert himself against the colourful orchestra, which, with Stravinsky like rhythms, dark string sonorities, and crystalline accents, continually creates new and dramatic situations.

The second movement begins with a contemplative viola solo that grows into a wonderfully lyrical duet with the piano – presumably a nod to dedicatee Bill Evans, the “gentle giant” of a subtle and introspective jazz style. The third movement is completely different, inspired by Oscar Peterson, perhaps the greatest jazz pianist of all time, whose massive appearance reminded the young Williams more of a football player than a keyboard virtuoso. Appropriately athletic, then, is the finale, opened by timpani: a movement propelled by surprising sonic effects, turbulent glissandi, and overflowing virtuosity toward a dazzling conclusion. After Tanglewood, Boston, and New York, Berlin is the fourth city to hear this concertante firework live.