Whirlwind Adventure

Scratched Off The "To-Do Before You Die List"...

Die Frau and I just got back from Chicago this morning.

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

We saw John Williams conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last night!

This was the program:

The Cowboys Overture
Excerpts from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
War of the Worlds: "Escape from the city" and "Epilogue"
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Goldsmith)
Laura (David Raksin)
The Magnificent Seven Suite (Elmer Bernstein)
"Conquest" from Captain from Castile (Alfred Newman)

intermission

"Tribute to the Film Composer" arr. Williams
March from 1941
"Out to Sea/Shark Cage Fugue" from Jaws

Harry Potter Suite:
"Hedwig's Theme"
"Aunt Marge's Waltz"
"Harry's Wondrous World"

Star Wars Suite:
"The Imperial March"
"Anakin's Theme"
"Throne Room and End Title"

Encores (3):
"Luke and Leia"
The Mission Theme (for NBC Nightly News)
"Raiders March" from Raiders of the Lost Ark

Overall the performance was dynamite! The characteristic sound that has been cultivated in Chicago for the last 50 years is well-suited to play this particular music (read: gutsy and brassy). One of the real treats of the performance was the "Tribute to the Film Composer". I'm not sure if this is the same suite that he conducted at the Oscars though. It was entertaining because you would literally get snippets of pieces and by the time you figured it out (or your wife says, "It's Exodus you idiot") you're on to another theme. These are what I remember (I know there were more): Warner Bros. Logo Fanfare (Max Steiner), Casablanca ("As Time Goes By", though Steiner wrote the score), 20th Century Fox Fanfare (Alfred Newman), Star Wars (Williams), Patton (Goldsmith), Titanic (Horner), Psycho (Herrmann), Exodus (Ernest Gold), The Magnificent Seven (Elmer Bernstein), E.T. (Williams), Jaws (Williams), The Sea Hawk (Korngold), Dr. Zhivago (Maurice Jarre), Bridge on the River Kwai ("Colonel Bogey March - Kenneth J Alford, though the film's score was written by Malcolm Arnold), Gone with the Wind (Steiner), The Natural (Randy Newman), Out of Africa (John Barry), The Pink Panther (Henry Mancini). Conspicuously missing, I thought, were any works by Miklos Rozsa. It would have been nice to have a snippet of the "Parade of the Charioteers" from Ben-Hur.

One of the interesting things was tempo. Ordinarily, at least on his recordings of suites, themes, etc. Johnny is known for taking tempos a little on the slower side (just listen to "O fortuna" from Carmina Burana on the 1996 Olympics album or the Second movement of Hovhaness' Mysterious Mountain Symphony). But at this performance he took things at a bit more of a briskly. This was particularly true of the suite from The Magnificent Seven which he took at tempo di tear-ass. Faster, I think, than Bernstein's original score recording.

One of the really fun things for me was to "see" Johnny's orchestration at work for real. This was especially true in Close Encounters where there's a lot of modernist orchestral technique at play. To see/hear that in action was tremendous!

One of the most disappointing aspects of the performance was the celeste playing on "Hedwig's Theme". It was not as smooth as what we're accustomed to hearing on the recordings but the orchestra's performance of the theme was great. Also Dale Clevenger, who has been the principle horn with the CSO since the 1840s, nearly missed an entrance altogether in The Cowboys Overture and his solo sound on other peices was really stuffy. Come to think of it, I didn't like his sound back in 2000 when I saw Penderecki conduct his Seven Gates of Jerusalem symphony (which is an incredible piece) with the CSO. I guess the other disappointment was that Superman was conspicuously absent as well. That would have been nice to hear.

By the end of the performance it was clear that the brass players were becoming tired because there were wrong notes (but only to those of who are nerdy enough to know). There were a lot of clams in the Raiders March but it was the third encore(!) so I guess I'll cut the brass section a little slack.

For those that have never seen Mr. Williams conduct it's, um, interesting. It's kind of distracting at times to watch but it does, nevertheless, get the job done. Actually there were several gestures I was quite fond of and will probably attempt to incorporate into my own conducting vocabulary. I also liked the fact that he didn't cue every little entrance but gave attention to where he thought it was needed regardless of what was going on elsewhere in the orchestra.

It was also good to see the Pikey there and we compared a few notes about the individual performances. (Thanks for dessert at Bennigan's, too!)

Overall the performance was terrific and the one of the great experiences of a what really is a charmed life (I am, in fact, a really lucky guy). Ultimately it will be a great story for die Frau and I to tell our grandchildren. "That's right kids. We flew to Chicago and camped out in the airport overnight just so we could see John Williams (one of your granddad's heroes) conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra!" How's that for devotion? My wife is one of the most awesome people I know to do this with/for me.