At a news conference Wednesday in Abravanel Hall, music director Thierry Fischer announced the Utah Symphony’s upcoming season.
Thierry Fischer
Following up on complete cycles of symphonies by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, the orchestra next season will perform the six symphonies of Carl Nielsen, a composer who has been underrepresented at Utah Symphony concerts.
Meeting with Reichel Recommends in his office in Abravanel Hall the day before the news conference, Fischer explained why he chose to program the Danish composer’s symphonies. “He was the first composer to come to mind. I like his music for its humanistic values and for the notion of progress the six symphonies represent.”
Unlike the Beethoven and Mendelssohn cycles, Fischer has programmed the Nielsen symphonies in chronological order, beginning with the opening weekend (Sept. 13-14).
The first weekend of concerts also includes Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with a trio of powerhouse soloists: cellist David Finckel, pianist Wu Han and violinist Philip Setzer. (Setzer and Finckel are colleagues in the Emerson Quartet. Finckel, however, is leaving the group at the end of the current season.)
The concerts in the 2013-14 season offer greater variety than this season in terms of content and composers. This was a conscious move on Fischer’s part. “I want everyone to be happy at each concert,” he said. To that end, there will be a greater mix of style periods and composers on each program. Planning concerts this way gave Fischer more interesting options.
An example of the maestro’s innovative thinking can be found in the second weekend, Sept. 20-21. The program will open with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and close with the suite from Richard Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier. In between will be flute concertos by Elliott Carter and Mozart played by Emmanuel Pahud, principal flute of the Berlin Philharmonic and a prolific concert and recording artist in his own right.
Emmanuel Pahud
“It is not clichéd to open with the 1812,” Fischer said. “And it prepares the audience for the Carter, although this is very approachable Carter.”
Pahud is a close friend of Fischer’s and the two have collaborated many times over the years. “I told him he had to come, and he agreed,” Fischer said. “That’s what friends can do.”
Other soloists appearing with the Utah Symphony next season include pianists Orion Weiss on Oct. 25-26, playing Mozart’s Concerto No. 25, K. 503; and Ronald Brautigam on Nov. 15-16, performing Beethoven’s Third Concerto.
Nicola Benedetti (Photo Credit: Simon Fowler)
Among violinists coming to Abravanel Hall will be the young rising star Nicola Benedetti on Nov. 8-9 playing Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons; and the Utah Symphony’s associate concertmaster Kathryn Eberle, who will solo in Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium on April 11-12, 2014.
Closing out the season will be cellist Matthew Zalkind, son of Utah Symphony members Larry and Roberta Zalkind, playing Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme on May 23-24, 2014.
Besides Mark Wigglesworth, who returns next season for two back to back weekends (Feb. 28-March 1, 2014 and March 7-8, 2014), the roster of guest conductors includes two who will make their Utah Symphony debuts. Yan Pascal Tortelier, the former music director of the Ulster Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic, will lead the orchestra in a program of Paul Dukas, Mozart and Sibelius’ Symphony. No. 5 on Oct. 25-26. And Hans Graf, the outgoing music director of the Houston Symphony, will be on the podium on Dec. 6-7, conducting a program of Henri Dutilleux, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Third Symphony, Polish.
Some of the other works to be performed in the upcoming season include Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust (Sept. 27-28); Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 (April 18-19, 2014); Witold Lutoslawski’s Symphony No. 4 (March 7-8, 2014); Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, Leningrad (Feb. 7-8, 2014); and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.
There will also be a tribute concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22-23. Fischer will conduct a program which will include Stravinsky’s Elegy to JFK, Peter Lieberson’s Remembering JFK, as well as works by Benjamin Britten and Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4.
Andrew Norman
Fischer and the symphony will once again be premiering a new work next season. They’ve commissioned young American composer Andrew Norman to write a percussion concerto for Colin Currie. The work will be played April 18-19, 2014, along with Pachelbel’s Canon in D and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.
“I love contrast,” Fischer said, “and the new season will have a lot of that.” It wasn’t easy coming up with the final version, he said. There were some 80 drafts, but Fischer is excited about the 2013-14 season. “I am very proud of this season.”
It was also announced that the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation will be the Utah Symphony’s season sponsor for the upcoming season, continuing a relationship that goes back more than a quarter of a century.
For a complete listing of the new season click here.