John Williams: Live in Vienna (2020) Movie Script
1
Thank you so much!
Guten Tag ladies and gentlemen
Meine Damen und Herren.
Ich spreche nicht Deutsch.
Sie erlauben mir, in English fortzufahren?
I will be very happy to tell you then
how happy I am and honoured
to be here in your fabulous city
and in this what is called, deservingly,
a temple of art,
and to stand before your
very great orchestra,
whose invitation to me is certainly
one of the greatest honours of my life.
Any musician...
Any musician accorded the privilege
of standing in front of this group of
musicians is one greatly honoured.
And I treasure this moment.
Also joining us today is Anne-Sophie Mutter,
who you all know.
You certainly know that Anne-Sophie Mutter
is many things.
She's one of the world's
greatest violinists,
she is a wonderful mother,
she brings honour to her country.
And in going to Australia and to Asia,
South America, North America, Europe,
she's indeed a very great world citizen.
And it's again an honour also
and a privilege
to welcome to the stage
Anne-Sophie Mutter.
So thank you very much.
What is coming now is the end of
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial .
Many of you will remember the film.
It was directed by Steven Spielberg.
He and I have been working together for,
I think, 44 years, something like that.
And it has been like
a very good marriage.
We haven't had any arguments.
We don't have to talk
to each other every day.
So far it's working very, very well, I hope!
This end of E.T., you'll hear the music,
it begins very quickly, in an agitated way,
when the little earth children are on their
bicycles. They're trying to get E.T. back
to the spaceship
so he can go back to his home.
And they are pursued by the police
and they go quickly on their bicycles,
faster, faster, faster, achieving what we
can imagine is escape-gravity velocity!
Maybe a physicist here will tell us,
35-miles-an-hour something like that
Escape?
And they've escaped the gravity speed
and fly over the moon .
And we accept it perfectly!
It seems very natural.
They land very gracefully on the ground,
you remember, and set E.T. down.
And then there's some sentimental music
coming at the end,
which accompanied the dialogue between
E.T. and his little earthling friends
as E.T. departs.
And then at the end of the music,
there's a fanfare and flourishes from
the orchestra that complete the film.
What I love about
these kinds of concerts is that
you can hear the orchestra
and you can hear the contribution that
all of our orchestras make to these films.
We go to the theatre and
we don't notice the virtuosity
that's been put into the soundtrack.
And now we have one of the greatest
orchestras in the world doing it for us.
You can imagine a composer's
delicate vanity, being able and satisfied
by having the orchestra play it
without the distraction of the film!
All the notes aren't covered up
by spaceships,
or horses' hooves,
or dialogue or whatever .
The enemies of music!
I shouldn't put it that way, but...
This is the end of, the orchestra's
contribution to the end of the film E.T..
Thank you ladies and gentlemen.
A word or two about Star Wars,
all nine of them.
When we first began this project in 1977,
the writer, director, producer George Lucas,
who you're probably familiar with,
gave us no indication at the time
that there was to be a second film.
So, I watched the film,
and I saw Luke and Leia, and I thought
they were two attractive young people.
And they were doing their comedy scenes
and their action scenes.
So I made the assumption that
at the end of the film and in their future,
they looked to me like
they might become lovers
and be parents, and have a life together.
And two years later, the second film,
George Lucas says to me,
No, no, no, they're not lovers,
they're brother and sister!
So I was off by a little bit,
but nevertheless we play the love theme.
This is one of the themes from the
second film, The Empire Strikes Back,
that will be included
in this little triptych that we'll do.
And then finally the March
from the very first episode.
We've just completed the ninth one
I think it's in the theatres here now .
So we've put a bow on it, which I think,
at least from my own personal
point of view and contribution,
that will be a nice tidy number nine.
So here are three little pieces
from Star Wars. Thank you.
Thank you.
This little piece is from a film,
Cinderella Liberty,
by Mark Rydell some years ago,
played by Marsha Mason,
who's a fantastic actress.
And it was the story of a girl,
a very simple, straight line in her life,
and she made a few wrong choices
and another few wrong choices
and her life became unravelled. It was
very sadly sweet and very beautiful also.
This is the theme from
Cinderella Liberty.
This little piece is from Tintin
and it's a sword fight.
I don't know how you say it
in Deutsch? Sword fight.
In the cartoon they tease the feathers
with the tip of their swords,
never cutting.
And you will hear these little feather
twists in this little piece, The Duel.
I have been so pleased to visit
with the Vienna Philharmonic.
| t's a dream for me one of
the great orchestras in the world
with a tradition
that one feels immediately.
But also, with the privilege of coming,
I had the concern about
whether the orchestra would be comfortable
with this style of music,
and how they would interpret it;
the idiomatic aspects of it would be
something that they would not be grasping.
And I couldn't have been
more happily surprised.
It was brilliant for me, the way they did it.
They understood the phrasing in a way
that I thought was particularly
of a certain idiom of film music,
which I know they don't play very often.
So I have to compliment the orchestra
on their great virtuosity
and fantastic ability
to cover all styles of music,
including one that
I don't think they play very much.
Their virtuosity and ability to adjust
is an amazing part of their art.
And for me, as a guest, a surprising one
and a very happy surprise.
The reason why I started to play
the violin is Beethoven.
So there we are in Vienna.
Actually it was the Beethoven Concerto
which I performed at a very early stage
here in Vienna
with the Vienna Philharmonic and Karajan.
Vienna used to be it still is
Such a breeding ground
for European history
in terms of painters and writers,
but also composers, obviously.
Alban Berg is another great hero,
which I fell in love with
when I was a rather grown-up violinist.
But for me being here now in Vienna after
having done most of the big repertoire
in this fabulous hall,
which just turned 150,
being here with you and playing with
probably the world's greatest orchestra...
It's a dream come true.
Somehow knowing
that you in your studies
had also so many roots
in European culture...
I think you shared the same
composition teacher with Andre Previn?
- Yes.
- Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
So, I mean, Europe travelled
to your country
and set foot in California
during the Second World War.
Because many of Europe's
and Austria's great composers
had to flee the Nazi regime.
Then in California there was this seed
of European music replanted.
And, as it happens,
you also write for film.
Andr once, I thought, beautifully said
that Korngold didn't sound like Hollywood,
but rather that Hollywood after a while,
after Korngold had been there,
suddenly sounded like him.
The level of composition,
which probably always was very high
but was very much influenced by
these great composers like Ernst Toch
who was a great friend of Honegger.
So where do you see
the relationship between
where you have spent most of your life,
in America, in California,
and the great European tradition
which has gone to America?
In a way we all know that music is
of course a global language.
Anne-Sophie, probably
I wouldn't be in Vienna now
had it not been for Andr Previn
bringing us together.
- Because I met you through Andr.
- That's true.
Here in Wien, I look around
this incredible city
and I say to people that are here,
that have lived their lives here
and look upon it every day,
it could be routine.
I wish the Viennese people
could borrow my eye for one minute
to look at the city on a beautiful day
with my eyes
and never having seen it before.
| t's the most incredible monument
to a history that we know.
But it is a physical evidence
of this centuries-old history
that we couldn't replace
in terms of art and craft and so on.
We just were in the National Library
to see a few Beethoven scores.
Of course, coming from the United States,
which is a very young country,
probably this building is older
than our country.
But seeing the city is an affirmation
of the history that we have studied.
And we can realize
that three or four or five hundred years
of a certain common thinking
and behavioural norms
that the society in Vienna, in Austria,
shared for so long
presents a history of an organization
socially that is so envious.
We cannot go back to an imperial system,
and we don't want to do that.
But this is a physical manifestation,
evidence of a certain kind of cooperation
- and unified thought...
- which left great artistic treasures.
I think the impression that
you can get here, you study it a little bit,
maybe will suggest to us the kind of
solutions to our governance we need to find.
And in terms of music, my God...
I ask myself, why, Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg...
Everybody coming to this one place.
It's like the heart of...
| t's a difficult question to answer,
why it happened.
Because of the wealth of Vienna to invite
composers to write for them, you see that.
And how does it feel for you
to be here with all that history?
For me it's almost unreal.
What I wanted to do, Anne-Sophie,
was only go to some street that
Beethoven was on and breathe the air.
Maybe it will help me and give me
some idea of how to write music.
Finally your line of symphonies is coming!
- Yeah, maybe!
It is enormously profound
for anyone interested in music.
And for you to conduct
the Vienna Philharmonic,
here in this hall,
which just turned 150 years?
How does that feel?
How is the acoustical sensation for you?
I mean, obviously we all
have heard them on recordings
and you have worked
with them in the States.
But here in this hall,
how is that when everything
comes together in their home?
It's something one feels.
Of course we have wonderful orchestras
in the States, we all know that.
They're technically amazing.
But just the last day here in Vienna,
to spend a few hours
with this orchestra, one senses,
they're brilliant players.
They have accommodated
to this style of music,
which is not classical,
which they wouldn't play every day.
However, the ambiance of the hall
and one's sense of history
and whatever's in the instruments
that the players were only children.
But now they're grown up
with something that they share,
some kind of common cultural heritage
they share, that's not even verbal.
And if you think that instruments
pass hands over generations.
- I was about to say, the instruments themselves.
- And the style of playing.
How much pressure,
whatever, all of these things.
And you really can sense a difference.
I actually thought originally
it would be old-fashioned.
But none of it, I didn't feel that at all.
It felt vital and alive
and contemporary in a way,
but imbued with this wealth
of shared memory of the past.
Even though | 'm not Austrian,
I know the history enough to know
that we share the memory of our
great great grandparents and so on.
- And now you are a part of that memory here in Vienna, of the orchestra.
- A tiny part.
I was so moved when the orchestra
was actually begging you the brass .
That you would include the
Star Wars march in the programme.
Because they just also wanted to have
the physical joy of playing that.
I was listening to it yesterday
in the rehearsal.
It was just totally overwhelming
seeing this joy in making music together.
It's something which I think
should not be underestimated.
And sometimes I run across
living composers
who are also incredibly intellectual
as you are
but who have totally forgotten
the connection
between the cerebral understanding
and construction of a concerto
and what has to be poured into it.
And your music is really
the synthesis of that.
And seeing these seasoned professors
and young members of the orchestra alike
joining in such joy in music they have not
played often is just wonderful to see,
and I hope it gives you great joy
to see that enthusiasm.
It was a wonderful experience.
We'll have two concerts, do it again.
But what is also true that music...
What I can do is only put some notes
on the paper and then it's finished.
- That's already a lot!
- But someone has to play it.
And then in my mind someone
has to also listen to it
to complete a triangular situation,
so that the music...
The thing about music is
that it will present itself
and immediately become evaporated
into space and time, it's gone.
- It will stay in our memory, hopefully.
- It stays in our memory.
It's fixed in time. You play the piece,
and now the time has gone.
So when you are working on...
Have you already started
to work on the violin concerto?
No, I only finished Star Wars
a few weeks ago.
The schedule was such...
The film was almost in the theatre.
We were almost selling seats,
and I was still writing the music.
So that was our production schedule.
Not unusual, by the way, for Hollywood.
| t's a human trait
to be having last-minute work.
But how do you usually
go about a concerto?
Do you use something
which is already existing?
I wish I could tell you, Anne-Sophie.
I think maybe what I would do...
Every situation is different of course.
The thing about writing concerti,
which I think | 've written 11 or 12,
it's for individuals.
And this will be for Anne-Sophie Mutter.
And I think a part of
what | 'm trying to do is
describe my impression of your sound,
your sensibility, if I can do that.
In a way it's a kind of portrait.
That's one way to think about it.
Maybe not!
It's possible to write
two or three little themes
that will be composed for
the first and the second movement.
But I wanted to go back,
speaking of Vienna,
what you said earlier about Hollywood
and music and writing...
And the connection of it all.
When I was a youngster,
we had all the people that you mentioned,
Korngold and Waxman, and all
came from either Germany or Austria.
They established
a style of writing for film.
Because in the beginning of film,
in the 1930s, we didn't know what to do.
We have sound now, we have to confront
the question of how to do this.
And the Europeans,
especially those from Vienna,
Max Steiner, Ernest Gold and Korngold,
applied what they knew about instrumental
music from the theatre and opera and so on.
So it's something that early on
I began to understand
that that was what movie music was,
even before I knew it was Vienna.
Because we already saw that
as the proper way to do an action film
or even a comedy.
- Think of Seahawk, with Errol Flynn.
- Seahawk, amazing!
And people used to say: The music doesn't
sound very English, it sounds Austrian.
But it seems to go very well
with Errol Flynn!
But of course there's a great debt
in our industry of film
to German and Austrian composers,
tremendously.
At the beginning at least, what little bit
I've learned about any of it,
I feel a great debt, especially in
orchestration and these things.
- How long were you with Tedesco?
- Not long, two summers, very briefly.
And who was your main influence
in terms of composing?
- Who was your main teacher?
- I don't really know.
I have written in such a kind of
chameleon-like way if you can say that.
I used to do comedies
when I was very young
and do it in a certain style and change it.
Star Wars required something else
that was more military.
What is more exciting and challenging
than standing next to the composer
who is also conducting?
This is actually very intimidating
and maybe the reason why I miscounted
a few times yesterday.
Because you're standing next to the man
who obviously knows the music inside out.
I admire the way you rehearse
in a very gentle manner,
how you speak about your music
and how you bring things together.
The idea has been suggested
that it might be a unique experience,
working together on stage,
we haven't done it very much.
- No, just a half concert in Tanglewood.
- But I have to confess
that at times with the orchestra
as we're working together,
it would be good if I looked serious.
I wouldn't look too silly!
But I have such fun doing it,
Anne-Sophie.
I'm conducting, you are there.
I start to smile, almost laughing!
I'm happy to look upon you of course.
But I have to realize
this is a serious business.
We have to get through this thing,
it's quick, it's difficult.
- It sounds easy, but it is not.
- Trillions of notes.
But intimidation is always...
If I conduct for any great artist,
there's an intimidation:
Will I be a sufficient conductor
and accompanist for this person?
And vice versa, back and forth.
Human, good,
because it gives a little edge.
It puts you on your toes.
And you work that way.
I would say as a conductor there are some
soloists that are a nightmare to follow.
Like singers also, sometimes...
- Yeah, | 've heard stories...
- You heard that?
- I hope | 'm not part of that group.
- No.
The bow is only so long,
but you can never measure...
But I can change it, inaudible.
It just feels totally natural
rehearsing and being on stage
and of course greatly looking forward
to the violin concerto.
I would say in German-speaking countries...
| 've never encountered it in England
or of course not in America,
there's an open-mindedness of
a multicultural approach to music
and its many possible
languages and dialects.
And in the German-speaking countries
we have this very strange labels called
Ernste Musik and Unterhaltungsmusik.
There's the serious music and
there is the music for entertainment.
Some people who think they are super
intellectual have invented these labels.
Probably a few music lovers
are surprised that film music
is being performed in a hall
where we also play
Brahms and Beethoven.
Do you have any comment on such...?
I could speak to it,
it's a very difficult question.
And it becomes a kind of
a cultural question,
an educational question,
geographic question.
But if you think about serious music,
is that the word you would use?
- E or or how do you say?
- Ernste Musik and Unterhaltung.
Even it has its roots in the
idiomatic cultures of various places.
You can't have Dvoik without
the country music of his country.
You don't have Brahms without
the dances and so on and so forth,
or even Haydn with the minuet,
or with this and that.
The source of all of this
seriousness and braininess...
It actually comes from the people,
it comes from the breathing.
And it may be becoming over-refined in
people's minds and over-intellectualized,
because it is a very great art
and so it can be applied that way.
And people can become prejudiced
I guess this is the word you could use .
Against sort of idiomatic music
that will still come along.
I have to say in this conversation,
as an American,
that probably the greatest injection
of a cultural stamp
has been put on by our
African-American brothers and sisters
that have created a music,
which in spirituals...
Anybody who's listened to Aretha Franklin
will understand the human heart.
And that has to be regarded
as great music.
And where are we going as an art?
Big challenges for our young people.
I wish I would be around in 100 years
to see what they do.
What music is really surviving.
I think also the time that people live in
makes the great leaders of society:
A war, a famine or whatever,
someone will emerge like
Franklin Roosevelt in our country.
So our children have to understand
that the geniuses are not...
You can't expect them, the time and
the currencies or circumstances of life.
Which means we have to develop
a really keen, sharply working society
where resources and ecology and
the population are managed in a way
that can produce this future
that we want.
With music in it, because music
is the only thing which holds us together.
I think so.
Despite all the labels we put on it,
A to Z, whatever.
At the end of the day
it's the only language we share.
The only language where we are not judged
by heritage, or religion or whatever.
I strongly believe in the place of music
in society
as der Zement der Gesellschaft.
You also mentioned that Alban Berg
is somehow not as exposed as...
You go to the Haydn House, you go to
the very many places Beethoven lived,
you go and look for Schubert and Mozart
And Schoenberg probably also not.
The last century is still
not so much in the limelight
and in the focus of people
visiting Vienna.
And so my question is, do you have...
It seemed to me because you mentioned
Alban Berg very early in our conversation
about composers
who had their homes here.
Alban Berg seems to be a more prominent
and of more actual importance
in your visit to Vienna, than Korngold.
Probably some people would think,
Korngold must be your great master.
But you mentioned Alban Berg.
- Because of the operas?
- I admire them both very much.
But it is true
that when I came here people would say:
You can go to Mozart's house,
to Haydn's house.
So the next question:
Can you go to Alban Berg's house?
No, I don't think so. We don't have that.
- But it will come when people evaluate...
- Next visit.
- Sigmund Freud, Alban Berg, Schoenberg.
- Absolutely.
And then we need a Wiener Schnitzel.
I could mention my first open-air concert,
which was very exciting for me.
I mean, you have done in numerous,
obviously, open-air concerts
and I hope you will do soon
one in Munich.
Because you were very much missed
in September of 2019
- when I gave my first open-air ever.
- Ever?
Yeah, I mean, I have played
of course in amphitheatres.
But I felt that the repertoire
A Mozart concerto, open air, amplified...
- It still feels strange.
- It's not intimate enough.
Exactly, it needs the natural acoustic.
But the interesting part in the themes
I have played from your films
is that it initially has not been written
for an acoustical room,
but for amplification, if you want,
or just for that kind of transport system.
And that's why I felt very comfortable
leaving the sound of my violin
in the very capable hands
of my wonderful sound engineer.
Because the orchestration,
as we know, is, thanks to God,
very impressive
and overwhelming at times.
And that's maybe a question
which arises out of that experience
playing it in such a huge space,
with the help, for the violinist,
of a very tasteful amplification,
versus bringing these huge pieces
into, not a small hall,
but a smaller space of 2000 people
here in Vienna.
What is it for you like as a composer
to conduct your music in the studio,
for the microphones,
and now conducting it
in the acoustical shell of...
Are there changes you want to do
to the pieces, to the orchestration?
Or just the way you balance the orchestra?
Working in the studio, you will know,
Anne-Sophie, is a very different psychology.
We can change balances just simply
by pushing a dial and so on and so forth.
So if certain things within the orchestra
need to be protected or the opposite of that,
and the main thing is that the soloist,
in this case a violin, is surrounded
with the right kind of ambiance...
I just remember there is one
piece of classical repertoire,
the Alban Berg Violin Concerto,
which really survives best in a studio.
With the Hauptstimme
and Nebenstimme...
- The orchestration is very heavy.
- Yes, the orchestration is so dense,
that even if they would play soft
you would lose character.
So this is, interestingly enough, a piece
which does not survive as well or
as clearly on stage than in the studio.
Is there anything in the orchestration
you would need to or want to change?
Yesterday after our rehearsal
I made a few little changes,
mostly deletions of things
that were doubled.
Which is to say parts that are still there,
but they're not duplicated here and there
which will make it lighter.
And that's a very usual kind of practice
that we go through,
particularly with violins and singers,
and cello also.
Particularly with that register.
But we are aiming to a one performance
before the orchestra will...
We are looking for a line and
an approach of this whole thing
that we rarely think about too much
in the film studio.
We will make the best take
we can make.
But then the practice is usually
the producer will say:
Let's just do this little piece here,
that little piece there.
You know you can do that.
So if you do a fantastic take, but you
may have missed one note in bar 62.
62 is not a problem, we'll fix it.
- In the concert of course...
- | t's a totally different situation.
It's a totally different psychology,
a different balance situation...
For me it's wonderful
to come back to the pieces.
Thinking back to the moments
we were in the studio
and I had barely, I mean, never played
the pieces in front of an audience.
And that long stretch from April
to now, January,
where I played in Tanglewood with you,
and then in September the open-air concert
and coming back to the pieces feels...
Very often actually I warm up
with the runs in Hedwig's Theme.
Because I've got a fabulous trick
by a wonderful string player colleague,
Lynn Harrell, who told me
he warms up every day
with the most difficult passages
in the entire cello repertoire.
Of course the cello repertoire is very
small compared with the violin repertoire!
But I find the idea really interesting.
So I warm up with some Bach stuff
and I warm up with Hedwig's runs.
- That's very funny.
- So you're in good company.
| 'm always ready for the runs in case
John calls in the middle of the night.
We played two rehearsals
with the orchestra.
At the end of which the orchestra
management came and said,
Can we play the Imperial March from
Star Wars? I hadn't programmed that.
I thought I had already asked the brass
to play quite enough of big music.
And as I understand it, the brass players
and the orchestra themselves requested
that we would play the Imperial March.
So at the end of the rehearsal
we played it.
They had the music, everyone
seemed to know it. And I have to tell you,
it was honestly the best presentation
of that march that I ever heard.
It had such solidity
and such power and force,
but also control in the tone
and the intonation of everything.
It is powerful and forceful,
but not forced into some airspace
that it shouldn't be.
A kind of strength, that defines the word.
That was certainly my favourite piece
that they played.
They played it as though they owned it,
and I felt very grateful to them
for giving me the chance to play it
at the end of the programme. I loved it.
Thank you so much!
Guten Tag ladies and gentlemen
Meine Damen und Herren.
Ich spreche nicht Deutsch.
Sie erlauben mir, in English fortzufahren?
I will be very happy to tell you then
how happy I am and honoured
to be here in your fabulous city
and in this what is called, deservingly,
a temple of art,
and to stand before your
very great orchestra,
whose invitation to me is certainly
one of the greatest honours of my life.
Any musician...
Any musician accorded the privilege
of standing in front of this group of
musicians is one greatly honoured.
And I treasure this moment.
Also joining us today is Anne-Sophie Mutter,
who you all know.
You certainly know that Anne-Sophie Mutter
is many things.
She's one of the world's
greatest violinists,
she is a wonderful mother,
she brings honour to her country.
And in going to Australia and to Asia,
South America, North America, Europe,
she's indeed a very great world citizen.
And it's again an honour also
and a privilege
to welcome to the stage
Anne-Sophie Mutter.
So thank you very much.
What is coming now is the end of
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial .
Many of you will remember the film.
It was directed by Steven Spielberg.
He and I have been working together for,
I think, 44 years, something like that.
And it has been like
a very good marriage.
We haven't had any arguments.
We don't have to talk
to each other every day.
So far it's working very, very well, I hope!
This end of E.T., you'll hear the music,
it begins very quickly, in an agitated way,
when the little earth children are on their
bicycles. They're trying to get E.T. back
to the spaceship
so he can go back to his home.
And they are pursued by the police
and they go quickly on their bicycles,
faster, faster, faster, achieving what we
can imagine is escape-gravity velocity!
Maybe a physicist here will tell us,
35-miles-an-hour something like that
Escape?
And they've escaped the gravity speed
and fly over the moon .
And we accept it perfectly!
It seems very natural.
They land very gracefully on the ground,
you remember, and set E.T. down.
And then there's some sentimental music
coming at the end,
which accompanied the dialogue between
E.T. and his little earthling friends
as E.T. departs.
And then at the end of the music,
there's a fanfare and flourishes from
the orchestra that complete the film.
What I love about
these kinds of concerts is that
you can hear the orchestra
and you can hear the contribution that
all of our orchestras make to these films.
We go to the theatre and
we don't notice the virtuosity
that's been put into the soundtrack.
And now we have one of the greatest
orchestras in the world doing it for us.
You can imagine a composer's
delicate vanity, being able and satisfied
by having the orchestra play it
without the distraction of the film!
All the notes aren't covered up
by spaceships,
or horses' hooves,
or dialogue or whatever .
The enemies of music!
I shouldn't put it that way, but...
This is the end of, the orchestra's
contribution to the end of the film E.T..
Thank you ladies and gentlemen.
A word or two about Star Wars,
all nine of them.
When we first began this project in 1977,
the writer, director, producer George Lucas,
who you're probably familiar with,
gave us no indication at the time
that there was to be a second film.
So, I watched the film,
and I saw Luke and Leia, and I thought
they were two attractive young people.
And they were doing their comedy scenes
and their action scenes.
So I made the assumption that
at the end of the film and in their future,
they looked to me like
they might become lovers
and be parents, and have a life together.
And two years later, the second film,
George Lucas says to me,
No, no, no, they're not lovers,
they're brother and sister!
So I was off by a little bit,
but nevertheless we play the love theme.
This is one of the themes from the
second film, The Empire Strikes Back,
that will be included
in this little triptych that we'll do.
And then finally the March
from the very first episode.
We've just completed the ninth one
I think it's in the theatres here now .
So we've put a bow on it, which I think,
at least from my own personal
point of view and contribution,
that will be a nice tidy number nine.
So here are three little pieces
from Star Wars. Thank you.
Thank you.
This little piece is from a film,
Cinderella Liberty,
by Mark Rydell some years ago,
played by Marsha Mason,
who's a fantastic actress.
And it was the story of a girl,
a very simple, straight line in her life,
and she made a few wrong choices
and another few wrong choices
and her life became unravelled. It was
very sadly sweet and very beautiful also.
This is the theme from
Cinderella Liberty.
This little piece is from Tintin
and it's a sword fight.
I don't know how you say it
in Deutsch? Sword fight.
In the cartoon they tease the feathers
with the tip of their swords,
never cutting.
And you will hear these little feather
twists in this little piece, The Duel.
I have been so pleased to visit
with the Vienna Philharmonic.
| t's a dream for me one of
the great orchestras in the world
with a tradition
that one feels immediately.
But also, with the privilege of coming,
I had the concern about
whether the orchestra would be comfortable
with this style of music,
and how they would interpret it;
the idiomatic aspects of it would be
something that they would not be grasping.
And I couldn't have been
more happily surprised.
It was brilliant for me, the way they did it.
They understood the phrasing in a way
that I thought was particularly
of a certain idiom of film music,
which I know they don't play very often.
So I have to compliment the orchestra
on their great virtuosity
and fantastic ability
to cover all styles of music,
including one that
I don't think they play very much.
Their virtuosity and ability to adjust
is an amazing part of their art.
And for me, as a guest, a surprising one
and a very happy surprise.
The reason why I started to play
the violin is Beethoven.
So there we are in Vienna.
Actually it was the Beethoven Concerto
which I performed at a very early stage
here in Vienna
with the Vienna Philharmonic and Karajan.
Vienna used to be it still is
Such a breeding ground
for European history
in terms of painters and writers,
but also composers, obviously.
Alban Berg is another great hero,
which I fell in love with
when I was a rather grown-up violinist.
But for me being here now in Vienna after
having done most of the big repertoire
in this fabulous hall,
which just turned 150,
being here with you and playing with
probably the world's greatest orchestra...
It's a dream come true.
Somehow knowing
that you in your studies
had also so many roots
in European culture...
I think you shared the same
composition teacher with Andre Previn?
- Yes.
- Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
So, I mean, Europe travelled
to your country
and set foot in California
during the Second World War.
Because many of Europe's
and Austria's great composers
had to flee the Nazi regime.
Then in California there was this seed
of European music replanted.
And, as it happens,
you also write for film.
Andr once, I thought, beautifully said
that Korngold didn't sound like Hollywood,
but rather that Hollywood after a while,
after Korngold had been there,
suddenly sounded like him.
The level of composition,
which probably always was very high
but was very much influenced by
these great composers like Ernst Toch
who was a great friend of Honegger.
So where do you see
the relationship between
where you have spent most of your life,
in America, in California,
and the great European tradition
which has gone to America?
In a way we all know that music is
of course a global language.
Anne-Sophie, probably
I wouldn't be in Vienna now
had it not been for Andr Previn
bringing us together.
- Because I met you through Andr.
- That's true.
Here in Wien, I look around
this incredible city
and I say to people that are here,
that have lived their lives here
and look upon it every day,
it could be routine.
I wish the Viennese people
could borrow my eye for one minute
to look at the city on a beautiful day
with my eyes
and never having seen it before.
| t's the most incredible monument
to a history that we know.
But it is a physical evidence
of this centuries-old history
that we couldn't replace
in terms of art and craft and so on.
We just were in the National Library
to see a few Beethoven scores.
Of course, coming from the United States,
which is a very young country,
probably this building is older
than our country.
But seeing the city is an affirmation
of the history that we have studied.
And we can realize
that three or four or five hundred years
of a certain common thinking
and behavioural norms
that the society in Vienna, in Austria,
shared for so long
presents a history of an organization
socially that is so envious.
We cannot go back to an imperial system,
and we don't want to do that.
But this is a physical manifestation,
evidence of a certain kind of cooperation
- and unified thought...
- which left great artistic treasures.
I think the impression that
you can get here, you study it a little bit,
maybe will suggest to us the kind of
solutions to our governance we need to find.
And in terms of music, my God...
I ask myself, why, Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg...
Everybody coming to this one place.
It's like the heart of...
| t's a difficult question to answer,
why it happened.
Because of the wealth of Vienna to invite
composers to write for them, you see that.
And how does it feel for you
to be here with all that history?
For me it's almost unreal.
What I wanted to do, Anne-Sophie,
was only go to some street that
Beethoven was on and breathe the air.
Maybe it will help me and give me
some idea of how to write music.
Finally your line of symphonies is coming!
- Yeah, maybe!
It is enormously profound
for anyone interested in music.
And for you to conduct
the Vienna Philharmonic,
here in this hall,
which just turned 150 years?
How does that feel?
How is the acoustical sensation for you?
I mean, obviously we all
have heard them on recordings
and you have worked
with them in the States.
But here in this hall,
how is that when everything
comes together in their home?
It's something one feels.
Of course we have wonderful orchestras
in the States, we all know that.
They're technically amazing.
But just the last day here in Vienna,
to spend a few hours
with this orchestra, one senses,
they're brilliant players.
They have accommodated
to this style of music,
which is not classical,
which they wouldn't play every day.
However, the ambiance of the hall
and one's sense of history
and whatever's in the instruments
that the players were only children.
But now they're grown up
with something that they share,
some kind of common cultural heritage
they share, that's not even verbal.
And if you think that instruments
pass hands over generations.
- I was about to say, the instruments themselves.
- And the style of playing.
How much pressure,
whatever, all of these things.
And you really can sense a difference.
I actually thought originally
it would be old-fashioned.
But none of it, I didn't feel that at all.
It felt vital and alive
and contemporary in a way,
but imbued with this wealth
of shared memory of the past.
Even though | 'm not Austrian,
I know the history enough to know
that we share the memory of our
great great grandparents and so on.
- And now you are a part of that memory here in Vienna, of the orchestra.
- A tiny part.
I was so moved when the orchestra
was actually begging you the brass .
That you would include the
Star Wars march in the programme.
Because they just also wanted to have
the physical joy of playing that.
I was listening to it yesterday
in the rehearsal.
It was just totally overwhelming
seeing this joy in making music together.
It's something which I think
should not be underestimated.
And sometimes I run across
living composers
who are also incredibly intellectual
as you are
but who have totally forgotten
the connection
between the cerebral understanding
and construction of a concerto
and what has to be poured into it.
And your music is really
the synthesis of that.
And seeing these seasoned professors
and young members of the orchestra alike
joining in such joy in music they have not
played often is just wonderful to see,
and I hope it gives you great joy
to see that enthusiasm.
It was a wonderful experience.
We'll have two concerts, do it again.
But what is also true that music...
What I can do is only put some notes
on the paper and then it's finished.
- That's already a lot!
- But someone has to play it.
And then in my mind someone
has to also listen to it
to complete a triangular situation,
so that the music...
The thing about music is
that it will present itself
and immediately become evaporated
into space and time, it's gone.
- It will stay in our memory, hopefully.
- It stays in our memory.
It's fixed in time. You play the piece,
and now the time has gone.
So when you are working on...
Have you already started
to work on the violin concerto?
No, I only finished Star Wars
a few weeks ago.
The schedule was such...
The film was almost in the theatre.
We were almost selling seats,
and I was still writing the music.
So that was our production schedule.
Not unusual, by the way, for Hollywood.
| t's a human trait
to be having last-minute work.
But how do you usually
go about a concerto?
Do you use something
which is already existing?
I wish I could tell you, Anne-Sophie.
I think maybe what I would do...
Every situation is different of course.
The thing about writing concerti,
which I think | 've written 11 or 12,
it's for individuals.
And this will be for Anne-Sophie Mutter.
And I think a part of
what | 'm trying to do is
describe my impression of your sound,
your sensibility, if I can do that.
In a way it's a kind of portrait.
That's one way to think about it.
Maybe not!
It's possible to write
two or three little themes
that will be composed for
the first and the second movement.
But I wanted to go back,
speaking of Vienna,
what you said earlier about Hollywood
and music and writing...
And the connection of it all.
When I was a youngster,
we had all the people that you mentioned,
Korngold and Waxman, and all
came from either Germany or Austria.
They established
a style of writing for film.
Because in the beginning of film,
in the 1930s, we didn't know what to do.
We have sound now, we have to confront
the question of how to do this.
And the Europeans,
especially those from Vienna,
Max Steiner, Ernest Gold and Korngold,
applied what they knew about instrumental
music from the theatre and opera and so on.
So it's something that early on
I began to understand
that that was what movie music was,
even before I knew it was Vienna.
Because we already saw that
as the proper way to do an action film
or even a comedy.
- Think of Seahawk, with Errol Flynn.
- Seahawk, amazing!
And people used to say: The music doesn't
sound very English, it sounds Austrian.
But it seems to go very well
with Errol Flynn!
But of course there's a great debt
in our industry of film
to German and Austrian composers,
tremendously.
At the beginning at least, what little bit
I've learned about any of it,
I feel a great debt, especially in
orchestration and these things.
- How long were you with Tedesco?
- Not long, two summers, very briefly.
And who was your main influence
in terms of composing?
- Who was your main teacher?
- I don't really know.
I have written in such a kind of
chameleon-like way if you can say that.
I used to do comedies
when I was very young
and do it in a certain style and change it.
Star Wars required something else
that was more military.
What is more exciting and challenging
than standing next to the composer
who is also conducting?
This is actually very intimidating
and maybe the reason why I miscounted
a few times yesterday.
Because you're standing next to the man
who obviously knows the music inside out.
I admire the way you rehearse
in a very gentle manner,
how you speak about your music
and how you bring things together.
The idea has been suggested
that it might be a unique experience,
working together on stage,
we haven't done it very much.
- No, just a half concert in Tanglewood.
- But I have to confess
that at times with the orchestra
as we're working together,
it would be good if I looked serious.
I wouldn't look too silly!
But I have such fun doing it,
Anne-Sophie.
I'm conducting, you are there.
I start to smile, almost laughing!
I'm happy to look upon you of course.
But I have to realize
this is a serious business.
We have to get through this thing,
it's quick, it's difficult.
- It sounds easy, but it is not.
- Trillions of notes.
But intimidation is always...
If I conduct for any great artist,
there's an intimidation:
Will I be a sufficient conductor
and accompanist for this person?
And vice versa, back and forth.
Human, good,
because it gives a little edge.
It puts you on your toes.
And you work that way.
I would say as a conductor there are some
soloists that are a nightmare to follow.
Like singers also, sometimes...
- Yeah, | 've heard stories...
- You heard that?
- I hope | 'm not part of that group.
- No.
The bow is only so long,
but you can never measure...
But I can change it, inaudible.
It just feels totally natural
rehearsing and being on stage
and of course greatly looking forward
to the violin concerto.
I would say in German-speaking countries...
| 've never encountered it in England
or of course not in America,
there's an open-mindedness of
a multicultural approach to music
and its many possible
languages and dialects.
And in the German-speaking countries
we have this very strange labels called
Ernste Musik and Unterhaltungsmusik.
There's the serious music and
there is the music for entertainment.
Some people who think they are super
intellectual have invented these labels.
Probably a few music lovers
are surprised that film music
is being performed in a hall
where we also play
Brahms and Beethoven.
Do you have any comment on such...?
I could speak to it,
it's a very difficult question.
And it becomes a kind of
a cultural question,
an educational question,
geographic question.
But if you think about serious music,
is that the word you would use?
- E or or how do you say?
- Ernste Musik and Unterhaltung.
Even it has its roots in the
idiomatic cultures of various places.
You can't have Dvoik without
the country music of his country.
You don't have Brahms without
the dances and so on and so forth,
or even Haydn with the minuet,
or with this and that.
The source of all of this
seriousness and braininess...
It actually comes from the people,
it comes from the breathing.
And it may be becoming over-refined in
people's minds and over-intellectualized,
because it is a very great art
and so it can be applied that way.
And people can become prejudiced
I guess this is the word you could use .
Against sort of idiomatic music
that will still come along.
I have to say in this conversation,
as an American,
that probably the greatest injection
of a cultural stamp
has been put on by our
African-American brothers and sisters
that have created a music,
which in spirituals...
Anybody who's listened to Aretha Franklin
will understand the human heart.
And that has to be regarded
as great music.
And where are we going as an art?
Big challenges for our young people.
I wish I would be around in 100 years
to see what they do.
What music is really surviving.
I think also the time that people live in
makes the great leaders of society:
A war, a famine or whatever,
someone will emerge like
Franklin Roosevelt in our country.
So our children have to understand
that the geniuses are not...
You can't expect them, the time and
the currencies or circumstances of life.
Which means we have to develop
a really keen, sharply working society
where resources and ecology and
the population are managed in a way
that can produce this future
that we want.
With music in it, because music
is the only thing which holds us together.
I think so.
Despite all the labels we put on it,
A to Z, whatever.
At the end of the day
it's the only language we share.
The only language where we are not judged
by heritage, or religion or whatever.
I strongly believe in the place of music
in society
as der Zement der Gesellschaft.
You also mentioned that Alban Berg
is somehow not as exposed as...
You go to the Haydn House, you go to
the very many places Beethoven lived,
you go and look for Schubert and Mozart
And Schoenberg probably also not.
The last century is still
not so much in the limelight
and in the focus of people
visiting Vienna.
And so my question is, do you have...
It seemed to me because you mentioned
Alban Berg very early in our conversation
about composers
who had their homes here.
Alban Berg seems to be a more prominent
and of more actual importance
in your visit to Vienna, than Korngold.
Probably some people would think,
Korngold must be your great master.
But you mentioned Alban Berg.
- Because of the operas?
- I admire them both very much.
But it is true
that when I came here people would say:
You can go to Mozart's house,
to Haydn's house.
So the next question:
Can you go to Alban Berg's house?
No, I don't think so. We don't have that.
- But it will come when people evaluate...
- Next visit.
- Sigmund Freud, Alban Berg, Schoenberg.
- Absolutely.
And then we need a Wiener Schnitzel.
I could mention my first open-air concert,
which was very exciting for me.
I mean, you have done in numerous,
obviously, open-air concerts
and I hope you will do soon
one in Munich.
Because you were very much missed
in September of 2019
- when I gave my first open-air ever.
- Ever?
Yeah, I mean, I have played
of course in amphitheatres.
But I felt that the repertoire
A Mozart concerto, open air, amplified...
- It still feels strange.
- It's not intimate enough.
Exactly, it needs the natural acoustic.
But the interesting part in the themes
I have played from your films
is that it initially has not been written
for an acoustical room,
but for amplification, if you want,
or just for that kind of transport system.
And that's why I felt very comfortable
leaving the sound of my violin
in the very capable hands
of my wonderful sound engineer.
Because the orchestration,
as we know, is, thanks to God,
very impressive
and overwhelming at times.
And that's maybe a question
which arises out of that experience
playing it in such a huge space,
with the help, for the violinist,
of a very tasteful amplification,
versus bringing these huge pieces
into, not a small hall,
but a smaller space of 2000 people
here in Vienna.
What is it for you like as a composer
to conduct your music in the studio,
for the microphones,
and now conducting it
in the acoustical shell of...
Are there changes you want to do
to the pieces, to the orchestration?
Or just the way you balance the orchestra?
Working in the studio, you will know,
Anne-Sophie, is a very different psychology.
We can change balances just simply
by pushing a dial and so on and so forth.
So if certain things within the orchestra
need to be protected or the opposite of that,
and the main thing is that the soloist,
in this case a violin, is surrounded
with the right kind of ambiance...
I just remember there is one
piece of classical repertoire,
the Alban Berg Violin Concerto,
which really survives best in a studio.
With the Hauptstimme
and Nebenstimme...
- The orchestration is very heavy.
- Yes, the orchestration is so dense,
that even if they would play soft
you would lose character.
So this is, interestingly enough, a piece
which does not survive as well or
as clearly on stage than in the studio.
Is there anything in the orchestration
you would need to or want to change?
Yesterday after our rehearsal
I made a few little changes,
mostly deletions of things
that were doubled.
Which is to say parts that are still there,
but they're not duplicated here and there
which will make it lighter.
And that's a very usual kind of practice
that we go through,
particularly with violins and singers,
and cello also.
Particularly with that register.
But we are aiming to a one performance
before the orchestra will...
We are looking for a line and
an approach of this whole thing
that we rarely think about too much
in the film studio.
We will make the best take
we can make.
But then the practice is usually
the producer will say:
Let's just do this little piece here,
that little piece there.
You know you can do that.
So if you do a fantastic take, but you
may have missed one note in bar 62.
62 is not a problem, we'll fix it.
- In the concert of course...
- | t's a totally different situation.
It's a totally different psychology,
a different balance situation...
For me it's wonderful
to come back to the pieces.
Thinking back to the moments
we were in the studio
and I had barely, I mean, never played
the pieces in front of an audience.
And that long stretch from April
to now, January,
where I played in Tanglewood with you,
and then in September the open-air concert
and coming back to the pieces feels...
Very often actually I warm up
with the runs in Hedwig's Theme.
Because I've got a fabulous trick
by a wonderful string player colleague,
Lynn Harrell, who told me
he warms up every day
with the most difficult passages
in the entire cello repertoire.
Of course the cello repertoire is very
small compared with the violin repertoire!
But I find the idea really interesting.
So I warm up with some Bach stuff
and I warm up with Hedwig's runs.
- That's very funny.
- So you're in good company.
| 'm always ready for the runs in case
John calls in the middle of the night.
We played two rehearsals
with the orchestra.
At the end of which the orchestra
management came and said,
Can we play the Imperial March from
Star Wars? I hadn't programmed that.
I thought I had already asked the brass
to play quite enough of big music.
And as I understand it, the brass players
and the orchestra themselves requested
that we would play the Imperial March.
So at the end of the rehearsal
we played it.
They had the music, everyone
seemed to know it. And I have to tell you,
it was honestly the best presentation
of that march that I ever heard.
It had such solidity
and such power and force,
but also control in the tone
and the intonation of everything.
It is powerful and forceful,
but not forced into some airspace
that it shouldn't be.
A kind of strength, that defines the word.
That was certainly my favourite piece
that they played.
They played it as though they owned it,
and I felt very grateful to them
for giving me the chance to play it
at the end of the programme. I loved it.