It's hard to divorce the music of John Williams from the moments it underscores on screen. An evening of the composer's music presented at the close of the New York Pops' season went a bit further, contending that Williams' collaborations with Steven Spielberg, which made up all but the last few minutes of the program, are where he's done his most diverse and vibrant work. From hearing the opening cello digs of the Jaws theme to the reveille trills on his score from Lincoln, it's a hard contention to shoot down. Under Spielberg's prolific variety of subjects, Williams has been able to craft Sousa-esque marches which dissolve to swoony love themes (Raiders of the Lost Ark), the celestial, often soft score for the loudest film ever made (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and the mournful violin of Schindler's List (performed wonderfully by concert master Cenovia Cummins). While Spielberg's scenes are indelible and the detachment is hard, Pops music director Steven Reineke said at the top of the night that Williams is singular, not just for his 50 Academy nominations, but because "you can take his music out of the film and put it in a concert hall and it just works."
Under Reineke's baton it certainly did. John Williams is the king of filmic earworms. Anyone who's been exposed can hum a bar of any given theme, but, presented in a venue like Carnegie Hall and absorbed all at once, the music clarifies. I was stunned by just how many unshakable phrases Williams packs into his compositions. We all remember the fanfare-like horns of Jurassic Park but have half-forgot the whimsical strings that precede them. As someone who's seen nearly all the films the night's selections were taken from, my favorite part of the evening was from the only one I hadn't: 2011's War Horse. Removed from visual context, the selection, Dartmoor 1912, demonstrates just how evocative WIlliams' work can be. An homage to British composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams, the piece unfolded for me a mental scene of the English countryside, the cantering of the titular destrier and a calm of peace with the edge of war still in the air.
The evening ended, as its title suggests, with Star Wars ("prepare for lift-off," Reineke said, in one of a few stilted speaking gaffes on the stand -- his conducting's unimpeachable). The selection included both the main title theme from the 1977 film and the fresh sheets (only made available for orchestras two weeks ago) of his latest nominated score, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Williams' latest work shows us an artist still very much in his prime and still experimenting. While it might have been easy to recycle the old stuff, the way Williams deconstructs, reassembles and builds on the raw material of the old films not only complements the approach of director JJ Abrams, it lends the work a decidedly more orchestral feel. Scherzo for X-Wings and The Resistance March have an angularity that feels nearly Stravinskian and Rey's Theme, a wholly new piece of score for the new trilogy's new heroine, add a whimsy and mystery to the soundscape that the prequels and their Holst-inspired bombast were sorely missing. In true Williams fashion, all the themes interleave together at the end. The crowd walked out whistling work from five different films, but the night did them the wonderful favor of letting them in on the less-hummable, though still infectious, interstitial music that makes Williams a master worthy of the classical treatment.
