John Williams was a particular favorite of mine because of his really fine performances of Spanish music, though his technical abilities meant that he could play anything. A really influential album was his integral recording of all the Bach lute music in the mid-70s. This was the first time that anyone managed this repertoire with anything approaching ease and facility.
Williams was the first classical guitarist to have a really solid technical foundation. His father was a guitarist, which got him started at an early age, and then he benefitted from studying with Segovia in summer masterclasses from his teens. But he is really blessed with a natural aptitude. Nowadays every young guitarist seems to have a John Williams level of virtuosity, but back in the 60s when he started his career, he was almost alone in his technical perfection. Segovia had great musical character, but his technical flaws were always evident.
At the beginning of his concert career, Williams exploited his technical gifts by recording all the important guitar concertos, the ones by Rodrigo, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Villa-Lobos, Ponce, Giuliani and Vivaldi. While any guitarist could play the Vivaldi and a few could play at least the Fantasía by Rodrigo, and more the Tedesco concerto, he was probably the only one in the world at that time who could play all of them, plus the Villa-Lobos, with ease. Bream being the exception, of course, though I always felt that he was not really at his best as a concerto player.
Williams could have built a strong international career, touring all the time, but after a few years he balked at this kind of life and settled down in London where he did most of his concertizing and recording close to home. He made a few side trips into popular and fusion music, but as he says (around the 40 minute mark) in this BBC special, it was rubbish that he did it for the money: he would have made more money touring playing strictly classical. I think this is true because unlike a lot of the people doing fusion or crossover today, he already had a big international career, he just didn't like that kind of life. The documentary is almost worth watching though it tends to be rather spasmodic:
Here is a much better documentary on Williams:
Does his technical mastery tend to overshadow his musical creativity? Yes, probably. He has mentioned that the influence of Segovia was not entirely beneficial and while he does not specify, it is likely that aspects of musicality were involved. One thing interesting about Williams' approach is that once he has settled on an interpretation of a piece, with very few exceptions, he plays it exactly the same, year after year. The exceptions are just a couple: his later recording of the Bach chaconne shows a considerable growth in awareness of Baroque style. More interesting is the second of his three recordings of the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo. The first and third recordings are exactly what you would expect: a rock-solid and musically excellent performance. But the second has a very interesting idea with the second movement cadenza. It begins with an arpeggio in the somewhat remote key of G# minor and for this recording he begins that cadenza very deliberately and very quietly, as if it is approaching from a far distance. Very powerful and effective! But radical interpretive ideas like these are rare with Williams. Actually, to be fair, they are probably fairly rare with all international solo virtuosos. I suppose if I were to compare John Williams with an artist on another instrument I might, very tentatively, suggest Friedrich Gulda on piano. They both were technical masters of the instrument and repertoire, but tended to chafe at the boundaries. Both explored musics outside of the classical realm, Williams pop and flamenco and Gulda, jazz.
So that's my mini-retrospective on John Williams. Here is a performance that shows why he is such a great guitarist:
Can anyone tell me the one interpretive mistake he, and virtually every other guitarist, makes in this piece? Hint, it has to do with the arpeggiated passage starting at the 32'' mark.
7 comments:
Hm, I have a facsmile of the manuscript to hand and there the passage is marked forte, while Williams play it piano?
I saw Williams perform for the first and only time a year or so back at a festival. He came on in cargo trousers and an old fleece, played some pieces he wrote (not particularly memorable), made a joke at some point, then that was it. Oh and I think he might have performed a short duet with Gary Ryan at some... His technique was excellent of course (I wish I could play with a quarter of his security...), but I can't say I was bowled over by the performance. I love many of his recordings though.
Like yourself, I have only seen Williams in concert once. It was either in 1975 or 1978 in Toronto at one of the big guitar festivals back then. He played the first half as a solo concert with a lot of the usual Spanish pieces, very nice, and the second half was the premiere of Leo Brouwer's Toronto Concerto with Leo conducting. Really a memorable evening. They repeated the whole second movement as an encore. There was a reception afterwards and I got to have a brief conversation with Williams though I'm afraid we only talked about amplifying the classical guitar, which he did for both halves.
Well, yes, in the Bach Prelude he doesn't pay much attention to the dynamics, but no, that wasn't what I was referring to. I made the same mistake he (and everyone) makes for years and years myself. I wasn't aware of it until I played the piece for a violinist friend of mine. He pointed out that the grouping of the arpeggio puts the G#, not the E, on the beat. Everyone plays it with the E on the beat. Why? Because the E on the third string is fingered with the thumb. It is quite hard to play an arpeggio and not accent the thumb--at least this arpeggio where what you need to do is accent the i finger. You don't notice the problem except for the slippage at the very beginning and, more obviously, the double beat at the end where the thumb is accenting the F# which is immediately followed by the E on the downbeat of measure 29. Amazingly, guitarists can play this piece for years without noticing! I certainly did.
I think what helped me overcome the tendency was some right hand exercises by Abel Carlevaro that combine the thumb with the fingers in various rhythmic patterns.
No, I didn't notice that at all. I read through the passage just now and found myself making the exact same mistake, despite knowing I shouldn't. It starts out fine but soon the thumb asserts itself... You've given me something to work on!
Sounds like a wonderful concert. Williams was amplified when I saw him too, but the size of the hall probably required it. Do you recall if he said anything interesting on the subject?
Yes, sometimes the hands have a mind of their own! I think that I was always troubled a bit at the end of the passage when Bach ends the arpeggio and goes back to scalar passages, because then you feel a "bump" as the downbeat shifts a sixteenth. But I always had something more important to worry about! I haven't done a survey, but I have never heard any guitarist who articulates this passage correctly. Might be interesting...
Oh, right, amplification. It was a hot topic because he was one of the first to use amplification in a solo concert. We just talked about how to get good quality and avoid it sounding "electronic." Good systems are probably quite common now. Another guitarist who has been using amplification for a long time, even in small halls, is Alvaro Pierri. He sounds perfectly natural.
A quick survey and I can't yet find a guitar version that does it right. But just noticed something interesting about Williams' version: he doesn't appear to be using his thumb for the passage? Most of the lute versions I found seem to have the right accent. Maybe it's because they are more conscious of the way different RH fingers have different strengths than guitarists?
Classical guitar amplification is still a hot topic it would seem... I was very sceptical, but on most occasions when I've heard it (barring one Aranjuez concerto which went rather wrong -- and why I'm still a bit sceptical about using technology of any kind) it has sounded natural, as you suggest. There is a long solo guitar passage in Ades's opera The Exterminating Angel, and when I first heard it, in my usual cheapo 'standing seat' (as the opera house amusingly call it), I was wondering how I was able to hear the guitar so clearly. The sound was so natural it just didn't occur to me until afterwards that it must have been amplified. I've had the same experience hearing amplified chamber ensembles. And I've heard chamber music in the Royal Albert Hall which I wished were amplified. This is a favourite topic of the chap who writes the On An Overgrown Path blog, if I recall -- the need to make classical music louder, as he sees it.
Still, excepting the utility of amplification in this manner, I'm generally a crank on the subject and regard amplification as a menace to society! Most music in the world is too loud, not too quiet, and thanks to cheap portable amplification we are subjected to it almost non-stop (well, lockdown, for all its miseries, has at least given us a reprieve from that -- though my local supermarket has begun to play loud gaudy music in the mistaken belief that it will make everyone more happy).
You are right, it looks as if Williams is not fingering that arpeggio with the thumb. But where the beat is still feels a bit in the wrong place.
I heard a Handel opera last summer with a theorbo in the orchestra and even though I was well up in a thousand seat hall, I could hear it quite clearly, so it was likely he was amplified.
I was rather against amplification during my career. I even played the Aranjuez a couple of times with orchestra without amplification. But if I were doing it now I would absolutely use amplification as much as possible. But not to blast anything out. Think of it more as reinforcing the sound. The guitar is too quiet to play large or even medium halls comfortably. Using high quality sound reinforcement makes both you and the audience a lot more comfortable.
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