Music Album Review: 'Pops in Love: John Williams & the Boston Pops Orchestra'

Art Design by Dennis Mukai and Peter Nomura (C) 1986 Philips Classics Productions

“If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.”― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

In 1985, Philips Classics Productions, the classical music label of Philips Records (now Decca) released Pops in Love: John Williams & the Boston Pops Orchestra, an 11-track album of light classical works by Gabriel Faure, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and others. The recording was first issued in two formats – vinyl long-play (LP) records and the then-new compact disc (CD) – in the United States. Later editions were on CD and manufactured in what was then West Germany. The West German CDs later made their way to American record stores and online emporiums such as CD Now and Amazon.

Millions of people know that the Boston Pops are fun. You can see that from the television shows, hear it on 50 years’ worth of recordings.

But you probably have to live in Boston to know what generations of Harvard men do – that the Boston Pops are a good date, that a Pops evening can be a romantic occasion. You don’t go to the Pops by yourself, and part of the warmth of thinking about concerts is thinking about the people, or the person, that you went with. At points in every concert the lights dim, the Pops play sweet music, and people start to hold hands. – Richard Dyer, in the liner notes for Pops in Love

Official Universal Music Group Video: Albinoni/Giazotto - Adagio in G minor

Recorded in June of 1985 at Boston’s Symphony Hall, Pops in Love was conceived by Maestro Williams and producer John McClure as an album that evokes feelings of longing, passion, and romance. As Richard Dyer, then the Boston Globe’s music critic, writes in the liner notes:

For “Pops in Love,” John Williams has chosen familiar music from this special part of the programme, music that people in love love to hear.

The 11 compositions presented in Pops in Love span several different musical eras and 300 years. There are musical pieces from the Baroque, Romantic, Impressionistic, and post-Romantic periods. (There’s even one composition – the “Adagio in G minor by Tomaso Albinoni and Remo Giazotto – that pretends to be ancient music but was composed in the mid-20^th Century.)

Official Universal Music Group Video: Ravel - Pavanne pour une infante defunte

Pops in Love: John Williams & the Boston Pops Orchestra – Track List:

1.      Gabriel Faure – Pavane (Leone Buyse, flute)

2.      Claude Debussy – Claire de lune from “Suite Bergamasque”

3.      Tomaso Albinoni/Remo Giazotto – Adagio in G minor (Max Hobart, violin)

4.      Camille Saint-Saens – Le cygne (The Swan) (Martha Babcock, cello)

5.      Erik Satie – Gymnopedie No. 1 (Alfred Genovese, oboe)

6.      Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky – Andante Cantabile (from String Quartet, Op. 11)

7.      Claude Debussy – Le fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair from Preludes Book I)

8.      Maurice Ravel – Pavane pour une infante defunte (Pavane for a deceased princess) (Richard Sebring, French horn)

9.      Erik Satie – Gymnopedie No. 2 (Alfred Genovese, oboe)

10.  Johann Pachelbel – Canon

11.  Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on Greensleeves (Leone Buyse, flute)

Official Universal Music Group Video: Tchaikovsky - String Quartet, Op. 11: Andante Cantabile

Composer-Conductor John Williams leads the Boston Pops Orchestra during rehearsals at Symphony Hall some time in the 1980s. Photo credit: www.grandorchestras.com

My Take

I have been a fan of the Boston Pops Orchestra since I first watched the now-defunct Evening at Pops television show that aired on PBS from 1970 to 2005. I “discovered” the show while I was flipping channels one night in 1975 – when beloved conductor Arthur Fiedler led the Pops – and watched it loyally through the tenures of Fiedler’s successors – Maestro Williams and – since 1994 – Keith Lockhart. I loved WGBH-Boston’s presentation of the Boston Pops’ concert – recorded at Symphony and presented across America regularly until the 2004-2005 season. After that, citing the expense of production – it’s always a matter of dollars and cents, isn’t it? – the Boston Symphony Orchestra pulled the plug on Evening at Pops.  

Fortunately, various recording companies - including RCA Victor, Philips (and its European successor Decca), and Sony Classical - have produced a wide array of albums with the Pops. I have several in my collection, and they cover the eras of Fiedler, Williams, and Lockhart.

Of the Williams-era Boston Pops albums, Pops in Love is unique for two reasons. 

First, it features an all-classical music program, with no arrangements of popular songs or show tunes whatsoever.  

Second, Pops in Love is one of the few Boston Pops albums in my collection that do not have any original film score material in the program.

That's not to say that none of the 11 tracks in Pops in Love: John Williams & the Boston Pops Orchestra have no connections to the movies. As a matter of fact, I first heard Albinoni and Giazotto’s Adagio in G minor when director Peter Weir – anachronistically – featured it as underscore in the tragic third act of his 1981 World War I epic Gallipoli. I saw that movie at least a year before I heard it again when watching Evening at Pops with my mom many years ago.

I originally bought this CD in 2010 to play soothing, sweet music to my mother when she became seriously ill that spring. Osteoporosis and the effects of several accidents – a car crash when she was younger and falls when she was older – had turned her lower spine into a fine powder, so to prevent her from losing the ability to walk, her medical caregivers decided to operate. In the summer of 2010 Mom underwent a complicated procedure that entailed, among other things, a six-hour-long operation and the insertion of a metal rod in her back to replace the vertebrae that were, essentially, no longer there.

The operation was a success. The recovery, especially the rehabilitative period, however, was not. Over a period of two years, Mom lost the ability to walk – not because she physically could not, but rather due to a fatal combination of stress, depression, and dementia. Almost five years after the surgery, Mom died, having not taken a step on her own since the summer of 2013.

When I became Mom’s primary caregiver, I made it my mission in life to keep her as calm and happy as I humanly could. To accomplish this, I watched movies and television shows with her in her small, cramped sick room. While her mind was still relatively lucid, I would help her with her Kindle – the only computer-like gadget that she loved – until she lost the mental ability to use it. And of course, I played many of my records for her, including this one.

Mom loved classical music, and because we used to watch Evening at Pops together until its cancellation, she loved John Williams and the Boston Pops as much as I do.  And Pops in Love was our go-to CD when she needed music that was both familiar and soothing. The album’s diversity – both stylistic and thematic – appealed to my mother almost to the very end. 

Official Universal Group Video: Debussy - Claire de lune