Last Sunday, August 11, John Williams added another honorific to his already incredible career: Disney Legend. The iconic film composer, whose nine Star Wars film scores and five for the Indiana Jones series are now part of the Mouse House's company portfolio thanks to its 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm, was honored at the latest D23 Expo by Dr. Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who's produced many of the films that Williams has done scores for. (The 92-year-old Williams could not attend, having canceled a series of summer conducting appearances this year "due to a recent health concern, from which he is expected to make a full recovery.")

Indeed, concert appearances - a rarity for many film composers and virtually unprecedented for a nonagenarian - have proven to be an unlikely signifier of Williams' successful recognition among film and music enthusiasts who can hum any dozen of his works when asked. A new vinyl collection from Williams' recent label home of Deutsche Grammophon will bring together nearly all of the great concert performances he's released this decade.

John Williams in Concert is a limited 7LP set that features the balance of four albums recorded and released between 2020 and this year, featuring his most recognizable film themes and plenty of extra favorites and even some newer, non-film material. The material that makes up the standard editions of John Williams in Vienna (2020), Violin Concerto No. 2 and Selected Film Themes (2022), The Berlin Concert (2022) and John Williams in Tokyo (2024) will be featured, as well as - for the first time on a physical format - three additional recordings from a 2021 date in Vienna that were released digitally in 2023.

No stranger to conducting orchestras on big stages since his 14-year tenure as primary conductor of the Boston Pops in the '80s and '90s, Maestro Williams extended his talents to Europe at the top of 2020, getting in a rousing live performance in one of the world's most storied cities for music. With not only the Vienna Philharmonic but friend and collaborator Anne-Sophie Mutter on principal violin, the set featured a brilliant mix of fan favorite scores (JAWS, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park) as well as deeper cuts like themes from The Witches of Eastwick and War Horse. Released on CD and vinyl during the COVID-19 pandemic (and later expanded), Williams' classic sound was reassuring in a difficult time, and the album ended up becoming the bestselling classical release of the year by a large margin.

This period revitalized Williams to take on a work outside of the film world: for Mutter, he fashioned a four-movement violin concerto - his second - and recorded it with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the fall of 2021. The album was released in 2022 with a trio of newly-arranged re-recordings of his film themes centering Mutter's playing: the theme for The Long Goodbye,1973's Robert Altman-directed adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel; and a pair of romantic motifs from Star Wars ("Han Solo and The Princess," from The Empire Strikes Back) and Indiana Jones ("Marion's Theme," from Raiders of The Lost Ark).

Just weeks after recording the concerto, Williams was back in Europe to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic in Germany - the basis for another stellar concert of film themes (selections from Superman, the Harry Potter series, an even bigger suite of Star Wars selections) and some non-film work (the still-used theme to the 1984 Olympics, the heartrending "Elegy for Cello and Orchestra," built out of a theme from Seven Years in Tibet for a memorial service honoring the children of a violinist friend of the composer).

While no new Williams concert album appeared in 2023 after the one-two punch of Violin Concerto No. 2 and The Berlin Concert, Deutsche Grammophon did offer a treat for fans in the form of three singles taken from an encore performance in Vienna in 2021. Those renditions of Harry Potter favorite "Fawkes the Phoenix," the latter-day Star Wars motif "The Rebellion is Reborn" and the concert piece "Sound the Bells!" - inspired by the composer's 1993 visit to Japan and the then-current wedding of the nation's crown prince - make their physical debut on the final LP of the package, an "encores" disc. This seventh LP also includes the film themes recorded during the Boston sessions as well as the finale of the most recent material that opens this set: Williams' 2022 leading of the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Tokyo, Japan - a moving set that included an emotional onstage reunion with one of the nation's most beloved conductors, Seiji Ozawa. (Maestro Seiji, who passed away earlier this year - just before this concert was announced for release - was the principal conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra during Williams' tenure leading the Boston Pops, and the pair became close friends at that time.)

John Williams in Concert is packaged in a thick-spined sleeve that offers each LP in its own pocket like pages of a book, and will include its own booklet, featuring the original liner notes from the four albums that make up this set, a new essay by esteemed film music writer Jon Burlingame, recollections of the sets by Williams, Mutter and other participants and photos from the concerts. It is available to order directly from the label, and is expected to be available around November 15.

John Williams in Concert (Deutsche Grammophon, 2024)

LP 1: Tokyo

Side A

1. Superman March (from Superman: The Movie)
2. Hedwig's Theme (from Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone)
3. Fawkes The Phoenix (from Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets)
4. Harry's Wondrous World (from Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone)
5. Theme from Schindler's List

Side B

1. The Rebellion is Reborn (from Star Wars: The Last Jedi)
2. Princess Leia's Theme (from Star Wars: A New Hope)
3. The Throne Room & Finale (from Star Wars: A New Hope)
4. Yoda's Theme (from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back)

 

LP 2: Boston - John Williams' Violin Concerto No. 2

Side A

1. I. Prologue
2. II. Rounds

Side B

1. III. Dactyls
2. IV. Epilogue

LP 3-4: Berlin

Side A

1. Applause
2. Olympic Fanfare and Theme
3. Excerpts from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
4. Suite from Far and Away
5. Flying Theme (from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial)

Side B

1. Hedwig's Theme (from Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone)
2. Nimbus 2000 (from Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone)
3. Harry's Wondrous World (from Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone)
4. Theme from Jurassic Park
5. Superman March (from Superman: The Movie)

Side C

1. Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra (from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade)
2. Marion's Theme (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)
3. The Raiders March (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)
4. Elegy for Cello and Orchestra

Side D

1. The Adventures of Han (from Solo: A Star Wars Story)
2. Yoda's Theme (from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back)
3. The Throne Room & Finale (from Star Wars: A New Hope)
4. Princess Leia's Theme (from Star Wars: A New Hope)
5. The Imperial March (from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back)

LP 5-6: Vienna

Side A

1. The Flight to Neverland (from Hook)
2. Excerpts from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
3. Devil's Dance from (The Witches of Eastwick)

Side B

1. Adventures on Earth (from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial)
2. Theme from Jurassic Park

Side C

1. Main Title (from Star Wars: A New Hope)
2. The Rebellion is Reborn (from Star Wars: The Last Jedi)
3. Luke & Leia (from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi)
4. The Imperial March (from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back)

Side D

1. Dartmoor, 1912 (from War Horse)
2. Out to Sea/The Shark Cage Fugue (from JAWS)
3. Marion's Theme (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)
4. The Raiders March (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)

LP 7: Encores

Side A

1. The Raiders March (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)
2. The Imperial March (from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back)
3. Fawkes the Phoenix (from Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets)
4. The Rebellion is Reborn (from Star Wars: The Last Jedi)
5. Sound the Bells!

Side B

1. Theme from The Long Goodbye
2. Han Solo and The Princess (from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back)
3. Marion's Theme (from Raiders of the Lost Ark)

LP 1 and LP 7, Tracks 1-2 recorded live with The Saito Kinen Orchestra at Suntory Hall, Tokyo, Japan - 9/5/2023. Released on Live in Tokyo - Deutsche Grammophon 00602465572568, 2024

LP 2 and LP 7, Side B recorded with Anne-Sophie Mutter and The Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall, Boston, MA - September-October 2021. Released as Violin Concerto No. 2 & Selected Film Themes - Deutsche Grammophon 486 1698, 2022

LPs 3-4 recorded live with the Berliner Philharmoniker at Berliner Philharmonie, Berlin, Germany - 10/14-10/16/2021. Released as The Berlin Concert - Deutsche Grammophon 486 1710, 2022

LPs 4-5 recorded live with the Wiener Philharmoniker at Wiener Musikverein, Vienna, Austria - 1/18-19/2020. Released as John Williams in Vienna - Deutsche Grammophon 483 6373, 2020

LP 7, Tracks 3-5 recorded live with the Wiener Philharmoniker at Wiener Musikverein, Vienna, Austria - 3/12-3/13/2022. Released as digital singles in 2023