Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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John Williams’s Violin Concerto No. 2 is the result of many years of collaboration and friendship between John Williams and Anne-Sophie Mutter. At Tanglewood in summer 2017, the violinist had given the world premiere performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra of a new work requested by and written for her, John Williams’s "Markings" for violin and orchestra. His new Violin Concerto No. 2 is a serious and substantial addition to a tradition that encompasses some three hundred years of repertoire, from Vivaldi through Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky through Berg, to Sofia Gubaidulina and André Previn. In requesting a new concerto from John Williams, Ms. Mutter expands her already remarkable, stylistically varied string of commissions from such composers as Witold Lutosławski, Wolfgang Rihm, Krzysztof Penderecki, Henri Dutilleux, and Sebastian Currier, among others.
Williams himself writes in the program notes:
"Composing program notes has always been challenging for me. These descriptions always seem to try to answer the question “What is this music about?” And while music has many purposes and functions, I’ve always believed that, in the end, it ought to be free to be interpreted through the prism of every listener’s own personal history, prior exposures and cultural background. One man’s sunken cathedral might be another woman’s mist at the dawning. The meaning must therefore reside, if you’ll forgive me, in the “ear of the beholder.” I can only think of this piece as being about Anne-Sophie Mutter, and the violin itself – that unsurpassed product of the luthier’s art. With so much great music already written for the instrument, much of it recently for Anne-Sophie, I wondered what further contribution I could possibly make. But I took my inspiration and energy directly from this great artist herself."

COMPOSER: John Williams
CONDUCTOR: John Williams
VIOLIN: Anne-Sophie Mutter
ORCHESTRA: Boston Symphony Orchestra

NOTE: This is a live performance! (WORLD PREMIERE performance, recorded in Tanglewood Music Center on 7-24-2021)

TRACKLIST:
0:00 - I. Prologue
11:13 - II. Rounds
20:44 - III. Dactyls
26:45 - IV. Epilogue

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