UTAH SYMPHONY, Abravanel Hall, April 12; second performance 8 p.m. April 13, tickets at 801-355-2787, 888-451-2787 or www.utahsymphony.org

On Friday the Utah Symphony delivered a polished and powerful concert of music which included works by Arnold Schoenberg and P.I. Tchaikovsky. There’s no need for flowery language or verbose imagery to describe the performance prowess this orchestra has developed under the direction of Thierry Fischer. To put it simply, this group has begun to offer up concerts that are tantalizingly close to flawless. I hope that the symphony will be able to begin to make recordings soon. The rest of the world needs to be let in on the secret that Abravanel Hall regulars already know: there’s a world class orchestra performing each week right here in Salt Lake City.

At no time was this more evident than during the performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique. The composer’s final symphony is probably his finest, and certainly contained some of the most audacious writing of the entire romantic movement (at least until the point where Schoenberg began to test the limits of the tonal system itself in his romantic music).

Take, for example, the third and fourth movements. The third is remarkable in its ability to inspire audiences to break the concert hall “rule” of not applauding between movements of a symphony. The music is so incredibly effective in its driving, steady build toward the towering climax which ends the movement that audiences, including the usually etiquette-observant audience at Abravanel Hall, are usually inspired to offer enthusiastic applause before the final fourth movement begins. Who can blame them? The music seems to be almost custom-designed to elicit that specific, excited response.  Maestro Fischer began the fourth movement during the height of this eager response, and to the audience’s credit, the applause quickly died away to reveal the morose yet inspiring strains of the funereal last movement.

Tchaikovsky knew his life was quickly drawing to a close while the Sixth was being penned. Perhaps this was a factor in inspiring him to break with certain compositional conventions. One thing is certain: the composer’s immortal legacy and his lasting place in history were cemented with this life affirming work.

The orchestra also turned in a terrific performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. Bravo to principal horn Bruce Gifford for his wonderful reading of the work’s famous horn solo in the enchanting slow movement.

Aside from the almost miraculous improvements we’ve recently heard in the quality of the Utah Symphony’s orchestral technique, Maestro Fischer has also been instrumental in bringing performances of exciting, often ignored literature from the 20^th and 21^st centuries into our community’s concert hall. In addition to the two Tchaikovsky symphonies performed Friday, two works by the essential composer Schoenberg were also performed.

Just as Beethoven is often considered to have straddled the classical and romantic eras, Schoenberg straddled the romantic and the modern. Early in the composer’s career there are several remarkable works of highly stylized romanticism which still hold up under intense scrutiny. The performance of the composer’s 1907 work Friede auf Erden was polished as usual in spite of the incredibly challenging choral writing. The music, at times, tests the absolute limits of tonality itself; not too surprising since Schoenberg would be creating Pierrot lunaire in a mere five years.

The Utah Symphony Chorus also performed a recently discovered, unfinished attempt by Schoenberg at an arrangement of an American folk tune, My Horses Ain’t Hungry. The composer spent almost two decades living in the United States after fleeing Europe in 1933. Schoenberg may have implemented some radical ideas during his career, but he also clearly had a deep connection to musical traditions. My Horses Ain’t Hungry is a clear example of the composer writing in a completely traditional style.