Symphony’s John Williams salute is suitably soaring affair.
Film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment are about the hottest thing going in the symphonic world. Short of that, an evening of John Williams movie music made a fine substitute.
The Houston Symphony’s tribute to Williams Tuesday night at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion was originally supposed to take place this time last year, but Hurricane Harvey had other ideas. It couldn’t have been rescheduled for a better time: Friend and frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg helped Williams, now 86, celebrate his 40th anniversary as conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl this past weekend.
Besides leading the orchestra, guest conductor Damon Gupton acted as master of ceremonies for the Houston Symphony concert, peppering the evening with movie trivia and insight into Williams’ background. For instance, while apprenticing with Henry Mancini for a while, Williams played piano on the famous “Peter Gunn” theme — a lurching, menacing riff not unlike the one that terrorized audiences in “Jaws” a few years later.
Given the composer’s vast body of work, the evening came off a little greatest-hits-y at times, but that was inevitable. Williams has won as as many Oscars as fingers on either hand, so something had to get cut. And so none of the following films, all of which earned the composer at least an original score Oscar nomination (one of his 50-something), were listed on Tuesday’s printed program: “Schindler’s List,” “Home Alone,” “Born On the Fourth of July,” “E.T.,” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
However, one of those later surfaced as a brief encore. Guess which one, then find the answer later in this review.
So many of Williams’ themes have tattooed themselves on pop culture — it’s not often that Boba Fett and Stormtrooper T-shirts amount to proper symphony attire — that Tuesday’s lesserknown selections offered a welcome change of pace and testimony that even his more obscure scores contain musical treasures worth discovering.
One seasonally appropriate selection Tuesday was “The Devil’s Dance,” Williams’ theme for Jack Nicholson’s character in 1987’s “The Witches of Eastwick.” The scurrying strings conjured images of storm-tossed autumn leaves, while the jaunty woodwind melody and bleating low brass invoked all manner of temptations. It could make darkly delicious Halloween programming for orchestras who may have grown weary of “Night On Bald Mountain.”
Another was the march from “1941,” Spielberg’s ill-fated WWII comedy released in 1979. The movie flopped, badly, but the march remains a jolly piece of music that Spielberg has called his favorite — trumping both “Imperial March,” aka Darth Vader’s theme in “The Empire Strikes Back,” and the suitably cocky “Raiders of the Lost Ark” theme.
But regardless of the film, Williams’ work displays the unmistakeable signs of someone who has devoted his career studying the relationship of images to music. So does Spielberg’s, which is why he’s asked Williams to score all but a handful of the films he’s directed. Almost like dialogue, Williams’ music is full of conversations between instruments, and his themes often flow from one section of the orchestra to another.
Sometimes they bounce. Think of the way the majestic main theme migrates from the strings to the brass in “Jurassic Park,” or how Luke Skywalker’s theme morphs from sweeping, melancholy strings and French horn when it’s introduced on Tatooine — known as “Binary Sunset” to Force fanatics — to the staccato, defiant trumpet-scored march of the “Star Wars” end credits.
Williams also packs a remarkable amount of expression in motifs that last just a few notes: five in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” a sequence Williams and Spielberg carefully cooked up to represent the communication breakthrough between humans and extraterrestrial beings.
For “Jaws,” which sealed Williams’ status as a first-rank Hollywood composer a few years before “Star Wars,” he only needed two.
Tuesday, that infamous theme even prompted nervous laughter in the crowd the first few times it appeared. The tempo picked up as the horns and higher strings closed in, effectively pitting the film’s relentless apex predator against the awesome power of the ocean. The Pavilion’s lighting crew even got in on the fun, slowly turning the stage from aquatic blue to blood red.
Williams can do reverent as well as suspenseful; “Hymn to the Fallen,” from “Saving Private Ryan,” made a stirring tribute to veterans, both for the vets in the audience and those gone on to their ultimate reward. But overall, Tuesday’s tribute was a lighthearted evening where the humidity was unseasonably low and foam lightsaber duels broke out in the concourse after the show. (Lots of kids there.)
Gupton, who served a conducting fellowship with the Houston Symphony during the 2004-05 season, seemed glad to be back in familiar territory. The Detroit native engaged with the crowd all night and drew some good-natured booing after admitting he’s a Dallas Cowboys fan. As a penance of sorts, he dedicated Williams’ 2006 theme for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” also known as “Wide Receiver,” to Texans wideout DeAndre Hopkins.
After the double-decker “Star Wars” finale — “Imperial March” and the throne-room/end-title music from “A New Hope” — the orchestra hardly had a chance to bow before Gupton strode back to the podium and cued up the “E.T.” theme.
Darth Vader notwithstanding, it’s hard to imagine ever closing with anything else. Spielberg’s love story between a gentle alien and an affection-starved boy is as uplifting as Williams’ transcendent score.
When the music ended Tuesday, almost as if they were no longer under their own power — and perhaps they weren’t — the audience immediately leapt to their feet.