As John Williams celebrates his 90th birthday this year, the music that he has written away from Hollywood has been getting its own turn in the spotlight. This first recording of his new Violin Concerto No. 2 is the most significant in that line.
It marks the high point of a long relationship between the composer of Star Wars and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. A shorter work, Markings, was written for her in 2017 and they subsequently collaborated on a gloriously lyrical album of arrangements from his film scores.
For Mutter, who has championed works by composers as diverse as Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Dutilleux and Previn, many of them commissioned by her, this is a further step on the road of exploration. The violin part Williams has given her is as technically challenging as any.
The concerto emerges from a cosmic murmur leading to an improvisatory violin solo and fades away, 35 minutes later, in a haunting violin threnody that suggests healing and renewal. What happens in between is more fitfully inspiring, the energetic passages for the soloist especially tending to generate more heat than light. The Prologue does not hang together, whereas “Rounds”, the second movement, is enchanting from first to last.
As fillers, Mutter and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer, perform newly arranged film themes from Star Wars, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and — best of all — The Long Goodbye. Soaringly impassioned, that might make that a fine concerto movement on its own.
★★★☆☆
‘John Williams: Violin Concerto No. 2’ is released by DG
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