Andres Franco has vivid memories of working as an assistant to John Williams at the Fort Worth Symphony in Texas. Williams, besides being a great composer, is an expert conductor who was music director of the Boston Pops from 1980-93. He guest conducted widely, including many times with the Pittsburgh Symphony, including making the “Cinema Serenade” album here with violinist Itzhak Perlman for Sony classical.

Franco recalls Williams conducting a little experiment for the Fort Worth audience. First, he showed a film excerpt with dialogue and sound effects, everything except his score. Then, he repeated the excerpt while leading the orchestra in his score, which was much more exciting.

The Pittsburgh Symphony will present the film “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” with Williams’ music played live by Franco and the orchestra on Aug. 2 and 4 at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall.

“John Williams’ soundtrack, with all its themes, motifs and colors, always provides emotional support for the entire movie,” Franco says.

“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” is the second in the series of film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s immensely popular novels about a singularly gifted boy’s experiences at an English boarding school devoted to wizardry.

From Jedi to wizard

More than 20 years separate the start of the “Star Wars” series and when Williams began composing music for Harry Potter.

“He was already a master when he wrote “Star Wars” but those movies are very different,” Franco notes. “He had written a lot more movies when he wrote Harry Potter and you can hear it in the maturity of his harmonies and his characterizations of the different scenes” in Rowling’s story.

Williams wrote the music for the first three of the Harry Potter films. In “Chamber of Secrets” he combines new and old musical ideas. Hedwig’s theme and Harry Potter’s theme are carried over from the first film, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” New themes include ones for Dobby the elf and Fawkes the phoenix.

Underlines the humor

Franco adds that Williams’ also underlines the humor that plays an important role in making the books and films so appealing. It provides the foil for the nastiness with which Harry is treated on summer break by Uncle Vernon and his family at the start of “Chamber of Secrets,” and also in the themes for the mischievous Dobby and the pompous and narcissistic professor Gilderoy Lockhart (played by Kenneth Branagh).

Williams’ music is nearly continuous throughout the film. The Pittsburgh Symphony’s assistant conductor says there are a few breaks – a minute here, 30 seconds there – but you hardly notice it because the intervals are so short.

Franco saw “Chamber of Secrets” when it first came out in 2002, but he’s watched it “countless” times to prepare for conducting the film. He’s been working at home with a special conductor’s version of the film.

“The trickiest part is to synchronize with the film,” he says. “The technology has improved since I first started conducting complete films in concert. Now conductor has lots of help beyond a click track. You have a monitor in front of you showing the measure in the score and a clock. With the cues marked in the score, you know exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

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