Worthy world premiere of John Williams’ Piano Concerto at Tanglewood

Each movement of John Williams’ Concerto for Piano and Orchestra evokes the spirit of a legendary jazz virtuoso whose musicianship left its mark on the composer: Art Tatum, Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson. Tatum and Peterson were men as large as their appetites and with a handspan to match. Both admired Rachmaninov as pianist and composer and could play with clarity and blinding rapidity. Evans, on the other hand, was a bespectacled thin man who, in later years and with shorter hair, had a professorial look about him belying his struggles with drug addiction. A student of Eastern philosophy and spirituality, his approach to the piano was metaphysical; the piano played him as much as he played the piano. All three had classical training. Tatum even aspired to compose in the classical vein and dreamt of soloing with the Boston and New York orchestras.

Following the traditional concerto structure, Williams chose the two pianists renowned for their speed for the outer movements. Introduction – Colloquy (Art Tatum) is nearly twice as long as the next two combined with the whole concerto clocking in at 20 minutes. Colloquy can denote a simple conversation or a gathering for the discussion of a particular subject. Williams partakes of both meanings throughout the concerto with the soloist engaging with various instruments and combinations of instruments, each movement speaking to the others, the audience a silent participant. Many passages are marked “freely” or “a piacere”, adding to the conversational quality.

The first movement piano part is entitled in the score “Art Tatum ‘chimes’”, referencing how his harmonies, voicing and rapid execution often combined to give his playing a bell-like quality. Emanuel Ax achieved that same crystalline clarity while remaining himself. Just as Tatum tended to dominate at the keyboard, the soloist here is front and center, often playing alone. Yet, one of the passages that stood out most was the colloquy between the piano and celesta.

The next two movements begin with a solo instrument – viola in the second, timpani in the third – signaling which sections will converse the most with the soloist. Listening (Bill Evans) echoes Williams’ impression that the pianist was interested not so much in playing as in “listening to what the piano may have to tell us”. The soloist’s part is marked “dreamily” expanding on the quiet, nostalgia-tinged, nocturnal mood created by the viola. Warm where the first is cool, the music here is the most impressionistic and melodic in the score, eventually fading back into silence The Presto finale begins immediately, challenging both soloist and orchestra with its pell mell cascade of tempestuous episodes and rapid tempo.

Williams dedicated the concerto to Ax who, at 76, played with indefatigable vigor, a light touch and youthful virtuosity, ably abetted and echoed by his orchestral interlocutors. They more than earned the enthusiastic audience response, which exploded into a roar when the 93 year-old composer was wheeled out. A successful world premiere ends with the desire to hear the piece again, but Williams’ success here will likely extend that desire to the recordings of Tatum, Evans and Peterson themselves.

Andris Nelsons’ Mahler has always been more Apollonian than Dionysian, employing a wide range of dynamics and tempo rather than intense emotions to characterize a symphony’s ebb and flow. In the First Symphony, his spacious opening movement vividly depicted gradual dawn and the growing bustle of activity, The humor of the inner two movements was differentiated with the dancing of the second tipsy and a bit clumsy and the funeral march’s collision with the klezmer band in the third sardonic and absurd. Mahler’s hemming and hawing in the finale can become tedious if not handled correctly. The spaciousness Nelsons lavished on this movement at times stalled the flow, slackening the tensile line he had established,  but he recouped with eight horns standing and the orchestra tolling in triumph.