Stevie Wonder Performs Original Orchestral Commission at the Library of Congress

The occasion was Wonder's acceptance of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, an accolade established only recently to "honor either a songwriter, interpreter, or singer/songwriter whose career reflects lifetime achievement in promoting the genre of song as a vehicle of artistic expression and cultural understanding." Wonder will formally receive his medal from President Obama in a White House ceremony tomorrow that will include another concert. PBS cameras will be on hand to capture the event, to be televised Thursday night at 8 p.m.

And should we bother watching? Was the music any good?

Well, yes! Admittedly, our under-educated ears are more attuned to the relatively simple sonic vocabulary of pop, but we know what we like. The nine-movement symphony -- wherein Wonder played piano and clavinet, while conductor Paul Riser guided the other 19 players on stage -- began with a loping, light-footed melody borne aloft by the strings. Next, Wonder jumped from grand piano to the clavinet, tapping out a jaunty, almost Elizabethan-sounding trot over a jazz beat. Heavy sounds of strife followed, courtesy of the brass and string sections. When Stevie returned the clavinet, what came out was a fast melody from wherever Appalaicha meets the Middle East, which joined the strings in a descending sequence. The next passage was just Stevie's mournful piano and shakers, but all was prologue to when he began to play his harmonica.

That Wonder-harp is such a familiar element of the 20th century pop lexicon that it's probably inevitable that the section that featured it was the one that sounded the most like a timeless pop ballad waiting for the right lyric. The piece swelled to what seemed to be something of a arbitrary crescendo, and the audience lept to their feet to applaud.

Speaking to the crowd for the first time of the evening, Wonder thanked Riser and his orchestra, before administering some self-critique. "I really messed up the ending -- I was in dreamland!" he said with a laugh. He spoke of envying Paul Simon when he was awarded the first Gershwin Prize 2007. "Why didn't I get no prize?" he joked, affecting the high voice of a child.

But he got serious when he recalled a neighbor in the poor section of Detroit he grew up in, whose weekend opera listening helped to inspire, years later, the Key of Life song "Village Ghetto Land." After he left the stage, the audience's cheers coaxed him back for two encore numbers, both performed by Wonder on vocals and piano and second pianist Herman Jackson III. "Overjoyed" had the orchestra members smiling as they looked on from the best seats in the house, and "My Cherie Amour" was a Wonder-endorsed audience singalong.