by Kevin McLaughlin
On Friday, April 24 at Severance Music Center, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra played to a packed house with a program devoted to John Williams and Steven Spielberg — a partnership that reliably fills seats. Williams writes themes you can recognize in seconds, sometimes in two notes.
Carl Topilow made that point before the first downbeat. “Ladies and gentlemen — the two notes that changed the course of music history,” he said, letting Jaws swim in with low strings, and a steady pulse, the interval repeating then tightening like a screw.
From there, the program moved among Williams’ familiar modes. The “March from 1941” had a buoyant snap. Close Encounters offered short, bright phrases, almost conversational. And in Jurassic Park, the orchestra leaned into the composer’s gift for breadth.
Not all of Williams’ music trades in spectacle. As the New York Times has noted, it often works by taking older materials and presenting them in technicolor. The themes of Schindler’s List are spare and direct, the emotion carried by contour and tone rather than overt passion.
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This weekend with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra is a case study in the breadth of sounds contained under the umbrella of “pops.”
“And now for the two notes that changed the course of music history.” Conductor Carl Topilow was half-joking in his introduction to the “Shark Theme” from Jaws, just one of many recognizable movie moments from the Cleveland Pops Orchestra’s “Salute to John Williams” on November 12.
“The hardest part of programming a John Williams concert is that there’s so much you have to leave out,” Cleveland Pops music director Carl Topilow said during a telephone conversation. “I’ve seen programs that focus on Spielberg movies, for example. But our idea was to present a cross-section of his music.”