By Kathryn Olsen
As the 2022-23 season of the Utah Symphony opens, the community came together with artists, composers, and supporters to honor Maestro Thierry Fischer with a one-night concert at Salt Lake City’s Abravanel Hall, A Toast to Thierry! The conductor, who has led the ensemble since 2009, will be departing at the end of the upcoming season and this gala performance was a most fitting way to begin the remainder of his time in Utah.
There is no denying Fischer’s indelible legacy and his influence on the Utah arts community. During the program, host Jeff Counts of the Symphony’s The Ghost Light Podcast highlighted Fischer’s work with schoolchildren, the composer cycles that he has conducted, the guest artists he has brought to Salt Lake City, and recordings he has been a part of. Those who may not have been aware of his contributions before attending the concert could not have missed the reasons for appreciating his work. Even without the testimonials, the program reminded the audience of his 336 performances conducted, including 163 masterworks premieres and 17 tour concerts that he conducted.
The program opened with a world premiere of Illuminations: Gratitude Fanfare by Augusta Read Thomas. The piece, which includes two-note motifs of “Thank you” and three-note patterns of “gratitude” among others, calls to mind Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. It fuses these noble themes with forward-thinking modern elements and the interplay between the brass and percussion is stirring as well as tonally interesting.
This new piece was followed by Trois Pièces Brèves by Jacques Ibert. Composed in the 1930s, these quintets for woodwinds are incidental music for a play involving romantic scheming. Flutist Mercedes Smith led the way with many of the melodies, while Lori Wilke on bassoon spoke up from the bass levels of the music. All conversations were vivid and evoked the wit and joviality of the source material, enhanced by oboist Zachary Hammond, Tad Calcara on clarinet, and Jessica Danz.
Principal keyboardist Jason Hardink took the stage for the fourth movement of a piece that is famously beloved by Fischer, Olivier Messaien’s Des Canyons aux étoiles (From the Canyons to the Stars). The Symphony has not only played this piece in the place that inspired it, but has recorded it for release in 2023. Hardink’s rendition of “Le Cossyphe d’Heuglin” (“The white-browed robin-chat”) virtuosically portrayed the bird in its natural element with chromatic leaps across the keyboard and it was quite enjoyable to picture the various mannerisms of the bird based on the composition.
The penultimate selection was the String Quartet No. 2 in a minor, Op. 13 by Felix Mendelssohn. Concertmaster Madeline Adkins, violinist Claude Halter, violist Brant Bayless, and cellist Matthew Johnson brought the repertoire into more familiar territory with the music by this early Romantic German composer. Their contrast between the serene adagio and the bantering allegro vivace were wonderful expressions of tunes that provoked excitement, but not haste. The conversations within the quartet’s performance were note-perfect, but seemed to also carry out well-reasoned discussions.
The final number of the night was Josef Haydn’s Symphony No. 96 in D Major, “The Miracle.” A much larger group of musicians gathered onstage for this finale and worked in perfect coordination without a conductor, allowing the symphony to give and take with each passage so that audience members could follow the storytelling of the work. It was a delightful act of teamwork and a light-hearted close to the night.
This was a single-performance event, but the Utah Symphony season opens with performances of Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 3 on September 9 and there are many concerts to look forward to in Thierry Fischer’s final season. Hurry to the box office to see what excitement is in store for audiences of Utah.
Utah Symphony Presents A Toast To Thierry
Maurice Abravanel Hall, 123 W S Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
September 8, 2022, 7:30 PM
Tickets: $50
Contact: 801-533-5626
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