John Williams

Concerto for Cello and Orchestra

“Music is our oxygen.” – John Williams speaking about himself and Yo-Yo Ma.

Composer John Williams is synonymous with movie music. He became a household name with the Academy Award-winning score he wrote in 1977 for Star Wars, and he has defined the symphonic Hollywood sound ever since. In addition to the Star Wars films, Williams composed the music for Jaws, the Raiders of the Lost Ark films, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., the Jurassic Park films, Schindler’s List, the Harry Potter series, and many other films. 

Williams has also composed a considerable body of concert works, including six concertos. Like his scores, Williams’ concert music also features his masterful orchestration and dramatic flourishes, and his concertos are designed to showcase the unique qualities of both the solo instrument and the soloist.

Williams and Ma have been good friends and collaborators for decades. “Given the broad technical and expressive arsenal available in Yo-Yo’s work, planning the concerto was a joy,” Williams writes. “I decided to have four fairly extensive movements that would offer as much variety and contrast as possible but that could be played continuously and without interruption. 

“The Theme and Cadenza, after an opening salvo of brass, immediately casts the cello in a kind of hero’s role, making it the unquestioned center of attention. It’s a movement that attempts to put the cello on display in the time-honored sense of ‘concerto,’ and as the hero’s theme is developed, it ‘morphs’ into a cadenza in which I tried to create an opportunity for exploration of the theme that would be both ruminative and virtuosic. 

“The second movement I call Blues.… In my mind, and without any conscious prodding on my part, the ghosts of Ellington and Strayhorn seemed to waft through the atmosphere. Invited or not, this was for me very welcome company. I set up clusters in piano and percussion that form a frame within which the cello unveils its misty quasi-improvisations. 

“The Scherzo is about speed, deftness, and sleight of hand. The music romps along in triple time over a treacherous landscape where athletic exchanges are periodically and suddenly interrupted by a series of fermatas, as the orchestra and cello try to dominate and outdo each other. There’s a short tutti where it appears that the orchestra might prevail, but the cello outwits and outlasts it. 

“In thinking about the finale of the concerto, I was always aware of the fact that Yo-Yo’s ability to ‘connect’ personally and even privately with every individual in his audience is perhaps the greatest of his abundant gifts. I therefore tried in Song, the concerto’s finale, to create long lyrical lines that would give the cello the opportunity to address the audience in the manner of a clear and direct soliloquy. 

“Whatever virtues the concerto may have can never surpass, for me, the experience of knowing and working with Yo-Yo Ma. Happily, and with complete justice, the world loves and reveres this man, as do I, and working with him is always a joyous journey to be treasured.”

© Elizabeth Schwartz

NOTE: These program notes are published here by the Modesto Symphony Orchestra for its patrons and other interested readers. Any other use is forbidden without specific permission from the author, who may be contacted at www.classicalmusicprogramnotes.com