AN EVENING WITH JOHN WILLIAMS
His 45-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’ s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’ s List, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones films, Munich, Saving Private Ryan, The Adventures of Tintin, War Horse and Lincoln. His contributions to television music include scores for more than 200 television films for the groundbreaking, early anthology series Alcoa Theatre, Kraft Television Theatre, Chrysler Theatre and Playhouse 90, as well as themes for NBC Nightly News(“ The Mission”), NBC’ s Meet the Press and the PBS arts showcase Great Performances. He also composed themes for the 1984, 1988 and 1996 Summer Olympic Games and the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. He has received five Academy Awards and 50 nominations, making him the Academy’ s most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars. He has received seven British Academy Awards( BAFTA), 23 Grammys, four Golden Globes, five Emmys and numerous gold and platinum records. In 2003, he received the Olympic Order( the IOC’ s highest honor) for his contributions to the Olympic movement. He received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors in December of 2004. In 2009, Williams was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and he received the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the U. S. Government. In 2016, he received the 44 th Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute— the first time in their history that this honor was bestowed upon a composer.
In January 1980, Williams was named 19 th music director of the Boston Pops Orchestra, succeeding the legendary Arthur Fiedler. He currently holds the title of Boston Pops Laureate Conductor which he assumed following his retirement in December 1993, after 14 highly successful seasons. He also holds the title of artistin-residence at Tanglewood. Williams has composed numerous works for the concert stage, among them two symphonies and concertos commissioned by several of the
MANFRED ESSER-HAENSSLER CLASSIC KOPIE world’ s leading orchestras, including a cello concerto for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a bassoon concerto for the New York Philharmonic, a trumpet concerto for the Cleveland Orchestra and a horn concerto for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 2009, Williams composed and arranged“ Air and Simple Gifts” especially for the first inaugural ceremony of President Barack Obama, and in September 2009, the Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered a new concerto for harp and orchestra entitled“ On Willows and Birches.”
John Williams last appeared with the BSO in June 2013, conducting a program of his film music.
Johannes Moser
Hailed by Gramophone as“ one of the finest among the astonishing gallery of young virtuoso cellists,” German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser has performed with the world’ s
leading orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic at The Proms, London Symphony Orchestra, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, Tokyo NHK Symphony and the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras with conductors including Pierre Boulez, Semyon Bychkov, Gustavo Dudamel, Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons, Paavo Jarvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Lorin Mazel, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Christian Thielemann and Franz Welser-Möst.
Moser recently won his third Echo Klassik Award for Instrumentalist of the Year, 2017 for his Russian recital disc on the Pentatone label, for which he exclusively records. His latest recordings include concertos by Dvořák, Lalo, Elgar and Tchaikovsky, which have gained him the prestigious Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik and the Diapason d’ Or. In the 2017 – 2018 season, Moser returns to the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio, Orchestre National de Lille, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony and the Seattle and San Diego symphonies.
With his newly formed piano trio with Yevgeny Sudbin and Vadim Gluzman, he tours extensively throughout Europe and North America. A dedicated chamber musician, Moser has performed with Joshua Bell, Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, Menahem Pressler, James Ehnes, Midori and Jonathan Biss. He is also a regular at festivals including the Verbier, Schleswig-Holstein, Gstaad and Kissinger festivals; the Mehta Chamber Music Festival; and the Colorado, Seattle and Brevard music festivals.
Moser has recently been involved in commissioning works by Julia Wolfe, Ellen Reid, Thomas Agerfeld Olesen, Johannes Kalitzke, Jelena Firsowa and Andrew Norman. He takes part in the European Premiere of Gubaidulina’ s Triple Concerto with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. In 2011 he premiered Magnetar for electric cello by Enrico Chapela with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, and in the following season he continued this relationship with the orchestra, performing Michel van der Aa’ s cello concerto Up-close.
Born into a musical family in 1979, Moser began studying the cello at eight and became a student of Professor David Geringas in 1997. He was the top prize-winner at the 2002 Tchaikovsky Competition, in addition to being awarded the Special Prize for his interpretation of the Rococo Variations. In 2014 he was awarded with the prestigious Brahms prize.
A voracious reader of everything from Kafka to Collins, and an avid outdoorsman, Moser is a keen hiker and mountain biker in his limited spare time.
Johannes Moser last appeared with the BSO in February 2017, performing Dvořák ' s Cello Concerto, Marin Alsop, conductor.
34 OVERTURE / BSOmusic. org