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. We’d recently collabo- rated on an album of film music for which she recorded the theme from Cinderella Liberty, demonstrating a surprising and remarkable feeling for jazz. So, after a short introduction, I opened the “Prologue” of this concerto with a quasi-improvisation, suggesting her evident affinity for this idiom. There is also much faster music in this movement, and while writing it, I recalled Anne-Sophie’s particular flair for an infectious rhythmic swagger.
At the beginning of the next movement, a quiet murmur is created by a gentle motion that I think of as circular, hence the subtitle “Rounds”. At one point you will hear harmonies reminiscent of Debussy, but I would ask you to reflect on another Claude – in this case Thornhill, a very early hero of mine who was the musical godfather of the Gil Evans/Miles Davis collaboration. It is also in this movement that a leitmotif appears that is later restated in the “Epilogue”.
“Dactyls”, a word borrowed from the Greeks that we use to describe a three- syllable effect in poetry as well as the digit with its three bones, may serve to describe the third movement. It is in a triple meter and features a short cadenza for violin, harp, and timpani – yet another triad. The violin’s aggressive virtuosity produces a rough, waltz-like energy that is both bawdy and impertinent.
The final movement is approached attacca by the violin and harp, the two instruments reversing their relative balances in a kind of “sound dissolve” that transports us to the “Epilogue”. It is in this final movement that the motif introduced in “Rounds” returns in the form of a duet for violin and harp, closing the piece with a gentle resolution in A major that might suggest both healing and renewal.
John Williams, June 28, 2021