John Williams To Conduct His Movie Music At Streamed Carnegie Hall Concert Tonight Also Featuring Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter

The legendary film score composer and conductor John Williams tonight will conduct a special concert of his music at Carnegie Hall that will also be broadcast and streamed on WQXR 105.9 FM in New York, wqxr.org and carnegiehall.org/wqxr.

The concert, “Across the Stars: The Music of John Williams,” will feature violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The program will feature selections from Williams’ movie scores, including, Carnegie Hall said, “Flight to Neverland” from Hook; excerpts from Close Encounters of the Third Kind; “Donnybrook Fair” from Far & Away; the theme from Cinderella Liberty; Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter; and “Throne Room” and Finale from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Other music on the program will include the New York premiere of a new violin concerto written especially by Williams for Mutter and his “Sound the Bells!”

In 2019, Deutsche Grammophon released an album, Across the Stars, featuring Williams’ movie music rewritten for Mutter. The two musicians have subsequently performed together in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic and at Tanglewood with the Boston Pops.

Tonight’s concert will be a fundraiser benefiting Carnegie Hall’s education and artistic programs, the former offered to educators and students, who, depending on the program, can be from kindergarten age through 24, in New York and around the world. Other of Carnegie Hall’s education initiatives include the Lullaby Project, which helps pregnant women and new parents write lullabies for their babies with the help of professional artists, National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America and NYO Jazz.

Mutter has performed for 46 years, winning four Grammy Awards and presenting the world premieres of 30 works by numerous composers. Williams’ career spans five decades, during which he has served as music director and laureate conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra and composed music for and served as music director of over 100 films. Among the film directors he has worked with are Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, Robert Altman and Steven Spielberg, the last of whom he has collaborated with for 40 years. He also adapted the score for the film of Fiddler on the Roof, composing original violin cadenzas for the violinist Isaac Stern, after whom Carnegie Hall’s main auditorium is named.

.