John Williams at the BBC

[Richard Tarleton]

Here's a clip, which I would have included had I been compiling the programme, of John Williams on the Val Doonican Show playing Torre Bermeja, from Albeniz's 12 Piezas Características -

This disappeared from You Tube a while ago, but is now back. The eponymous vermilion tower is at the western end of the Alhambra, and changes colour in the sunset. It's always been one of my favourite Spanish guitar pieces, and it would have done very well instead of one of the 3 iterations of the ghastly Cavatina JW at his mighty best, a ferociously difficult piece (look out for the little harmonics passages at 1.30 and 2.20) - the sort of piece you might normally play (if you could play it at all) in part 2 of a recital when you were thoroughly warmed up, rather than from a standing start in front of a studio audience - JW looks so relaxed he could be playing in his living room

You will also find, on You Tube, footage of a very old Segovia playing this piece in the Court of Myrtles in the Alhambra - he played it the one time I saw him, in the RFH in 1972.....

[french frank]

Here's a clip, which I would have included had I been compiling the programme, of John Williams on the Val Doonican Show playing Torre Bermeja, from Albeniz's 12 Piezas Características

Yeah, well - speeded the film up, haven't they?

That kind of virtuosity really is JW at his (unequalled?) best. Stunning. Thanks for the reminder

[Richard Tarleton]

Just caught Tom Service's fascinating conversation with John Williams on Music Matters. JW expanding on the various musical directions he has travelled in (references to Africa and S America), various musical influences, and on how the musical era which he and Bream represented is over.... Also on his father's influence, and more evidence of quite how unpleasant Segovia was

It takes a good interviewer to get the best out of JW, and TS was more than up to it. JW said how he was not an improviser - TS, however, nailed how he was a master of idioms.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It takes a good interviewer to get the best out of JW, and TS was more than up to it. JW said how he was not an improviser - TS, however, nailed how he was a master of idioms.

Horribly flawed as his concert presentations are, in my opinion, he is (or can be - the Ades affair demonstrates otherwise) the finest interviewer of Musicians there is. The way, too, that he adapts his interview style to get the best responses from the people he talks to (he was much gentler with JW than he was with Birtwistle - where his tenacious manoeuvres to get the composer to answer his questions with replies other than the rehearsed ones he always gives in interviews led to Birtwistle to exclaim, "You should be a composer: these are the questions I always ask myself"). Quite why the ditsy personality is thought appropriate in concert introductions defeats me.