Nearly 70 years after his Hollywood debut, legendary composer John Williams premiered his first ever piano concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts on July 26th, receiving rapturous applause and a standing ovation.
The piece, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, was written for pianist Emanuel Ax and was conducted by Andris Nelsons.
Not only was the piece met with rapturous applause, but Williams was greeted like a rockstar when he joined the performers on stage. He held Ax and Nelsons’ hands as the audience cheered for him and his new work.
Williams first met Ax in 1994 in the very venue this new concerto was premiered. In 2022, Ax read a New York Times article that said that Williams was planning to write a piano concerto, so he got in touch and asked to be involved.
“I am afraid I took the bull by the horns,” Ax, 76, told the Times.
Williams, of course, agreed and wrote back the next day: “That’s great. I’m going to work on it, and I will send it to you.”
He began working on the concerto in 2023, and the two met several times while Williams was working on it.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done”, he said, “I just thought it was impossible.”
He added: “So much in the history of music, piano, keyboard, digital, fingers—that anyone would be daunted, I think.”
Williams is not unaware of how extraordinary it is to be composing into his nineties.
“At this point in life, you don’t know what kind of energy you’re going to have a year or two from now,” he told Symphony in 2024. “I have to live in the present, contribute what little I can and enjoy making music, which is such an important part of human life.
“Human experience would be empty without music.”
Being involved in the composition process was exciting for Ax too. “I didn’t know what to expect, so I was generally amazed,” he told WCRB. “It was wonderful to be able to spend time with this incredible man. He’s, aside from his genius, one could say, he’s also the warmest, kindest, most generous person one can imagine.”
The work is inspired by three jazz pianists, Art Tatum, Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson. Ax described the piece as “thorny” – tonal worlds away from Williams’ emblematic melodic film scores.
Although this is Williams’ first piano concerto, he has composed concertos for the flute, tuba, clarinet, cello, trumpet, horn, viola and oboe.
The concerto will be performed again by the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in early 2026.
