Boston Classical Review

Emanuel Ax performed John Wiliams’ Piano Concerto with Andris Nelsons leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra Thursday night. Photo: Robert Torres

Since its founding in 1881, the Boston Symphony Orchestra has cultivated relationships with some notable composers: Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and Thomas Adès among them. But few of those partnerships have combined the star wattage, longevity, and warmth of the ensemble’s near half-century-long association with John Williams.

On Thursday, the orchestra and music director Andris Nelsons celebrated their colleague as part of this month’s “E Pluribus Unum” festival. While the evening’s program offered its share of familiar hits from the composer’s film music catalogue, it also leaned into Williams’ considerable concert output. The results proved illuminating.

Both of the night’s concertante items—the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and TreeSong—boast local ties. The former was written for Emanuel Ax, who gave its premiere with Nelsons and the BSO at Tanglewood last July.

Cast in three movements, the score references a trio of jazz pianists that Williams, an accomplished jazz pianist in his own right, admires: Art Tatum, Bill Evans, and Oscar Peterson. At Symphony Hall on Thursday, those allusions came over potently, especially the rich, hazy nods to Evans in the central section and the finale’s incisive, Peterson-worthy runs and attacks.

Ax, whose mastery of the standard canon is a given, looked and sounded perfectly at home in this jazz-inflected fare. The pianist drew a mosaic of colors and characters from his part, playing with voicings that were ever clean, clear, and well-balanced. His navigation of the music’s repeated figures and runs were spiffily on-point as was his command of the concerto’s several improvisatory-like episodes, particularly in the first movement.

The accompaniment by Nelsons and the BSO was locked in, especially relating to matters of dynamics and balance. Quiet moments, like the Tatum section’s fadeout and the central one’s Evans-esque coda, offered electrifying intensity. The finale’s chase scene-like outer thirds were taut and lively.

Much of Williams’ concert music tends to eschew the immediate, tuneful appeal of his movie work and this Concerto, with its extended, abstract musings on three jazz greats, is no exception. That said, several points in the score seemed to channel Hollywood a bit more than usual: textures reminiscent of Close Encounters of the Third Kind emerged in the first movement, E. T. in the second.

If, taken together, this mix of touchstones give the larger work a valedictory quality—Williams will be 94 next month—there’s little sense of the composer going gently into the night: the finale builds to a rousing, emphatic conclusion. Ax and the BSO delivered that ending with thrilling gusto.

TreeSong, on the other hand, is more meditative.

Gil Shaham performed John Williams’ TreeSong Thursday night with the BSO. Photo: Robert Torres

Written for violinist Gil Shaham in 2000, the twenty-minute-long effort owes its title to a favorite tree of Williams’ in Boston’s Public Garden. Though the score itself meanders (particularly in its middle movement, “Trunks, Branches, and Leaves”), the work functions as a terrific showcase of its dedicatee’s artistry.

On Thursday, Shaham, back in Boston for the first time since 2017, was fully in his element, drawing out the sweet warmth of his instrument in TreeSong’s songful parts while navigating its central, scherzando passagework with vigor and precision. His account of the extended cadenza was commendably soulful.

Again, Nelsons and the orchestra brought absorbing focus to their contributions. They tapped the opening movement’s sense of primordial mystery with becoming delicacy. The orchestral climax in the second section was radiant. And the finale’s languorously dissonant lyricism and lovely, if cinematic, coda were delivered with discretion and taste. Here and in the pairing’s account of the “Theme” from Schindler’s List, a charming collegiality reigned, Shaham playing with the orchestra as much through his body language and eye contact as with his violin.

Both the excerpt from Schindler’s List and the Suite from Close Encounters of the Third Kind were treated to a slightly broader, more theatrical approach than is sometimes the case. In the former, this had the effect of drawing out the music’s inwardness while affording English hornist Robert Sheena a couple of moments to really shine.

Close Encounters, on the other hand, came off as both the most radical and the most traditional of the night’s offerings.

The BSO made the most of the first section’s eerie tone clusters and seething textures, while Nelsons seemed to be channeling Wagner at a couple transition points in the Suite’s latter part. But his tack worked and, for balance and resplendence, the orchestra was in its finest fettle during this music’s soaring apogee.

To open the night, Nelsons and Co. offered the “Joy Ride” from Escapades. Drawn from Williams’ score to Catch Me if You Can, the jazz-centric number’s bright, snaking lines; asymmetrical meters; and lively duets for saxophone and vibes made for an apt lead-in to the Concerto.

As with most of Thursday’s offerings, “Joy Ride” was short: just about five minutes long. In fact, the night’s whole program totaled barely sixty minutes of music.

Happily, that left plenty of time for a pair of encores—Ax and the orchestra gave a lilting rendition of the “Theme” from Sabrina and Nelsons led the BSO in a rollicking “Imperial March” from The Empire Strikes Back—as well as for Williams, himself, to take a couple of extended bows. Now confined to a wheelchair, he nevertheless was on hand to exude his trademark good cheer in response to the roars of approval from Thursday’s crowd.

The program will be repeated 1:30 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday at Symphony Hall. bso.org

John Williams acknowledges audience applause at the BSO concert Thursday night. Photo: Robert Torres

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