I attended the premiere of John Williams' horn concerto, performed by Dale Clevenger and the CSO, on Saturday night. It was an interesting piece, not a typical fast-slow-fast three movement concerto, but rather a suite of five movements, each reminding the listener of the use of the horn in various cultures' histories. The first movement uses horn and bells sounding calls and signals. The second movement, called "Battle of the Trees" is rather percussive, as would be dueling trees, in which the horn stirs up the fire quite nicely. Reminded me of parts of Rite of Spring a couple times, but then this is John Williams. The third movement was a Pastorale featuring horn and oboe, which transitioned without pause into the fourth movement, The Hunt. Finally, the fifth movement, Nocturne (had me thinking Gordon Jacob concerto, 2nd movement for the first few bars), was a song for the horn. Ending with a reflective song doesn't seem terribly John Williams to me, and didn't provide Clevenger with a showy "knock their socks off" ending, but it was nice. The whole piece was a little over 20 minutes long.
Before the concert, there was a discussion between Williams and Clevenger about the concerto. Clevenger recounted being asked to think about who he'd have write a concerto for him. His initial reaction was that his first choices were all dead, and even if Bernstein were alive, he wouldn't have done it, anyway. He said the problem with today's composers is that you have no idea what you'll get, but probably a lot of "boop-beep-BLAAAP-borp-bvvt," which he didn't want. John Williams told a similar anecdote where after viewing Schindler's List, he told Steven Spielberg that he needed a much better composer to score the film. Spielberg said, "I know, but they're all dead." The second half of the concert featured film music from Close Encounters, JFK, Far and Away, Schindler's List, and E.T. The Star Wars main theme was the 2nd encore, and the final encore, "since we were all going to miss the nightly news," was the NBC Nightly News theme, with the added benefit of not having to listen to Tom Brokaw. Fun. John Baumgart _______________________________________________ post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] set your options at http://music.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
