Utah Symphony's 2024-25 Season Highlights Our Incredible Artists 

Some surprising and super-cool choices in repertoire mixing and matching are on the Utah Symphony Masterworks series for the 2024-2025 season. Poulenc's choral Gloria with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. Ravel), Britten's Piano Concerto with Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony, Tchaikovsky's The Tempest with a suite from Korngold's music for the film the Sea Hawk, Glazunov's The Seasons with Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, and Steve Reich's The Desert Music with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Plus, there is the indispensable continuation of music director emeritus Thierry Fischer's numerically consecutive Haydn Symphony cycle (No.13) with Mahler's 5th Symphony. This Haydn "symphony cycle" should continue every year, and in my opinion Thierry Fischer at this point should be invited back for one to two Masterworks programs per season form the foreseeable future (the next ten years perhaps?). Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 2 with Brahms's Serenade No.1 and Mozart's Piano Concerto No.17 is a spectacular bit of programming. Brahms's two Serenades are so infrequently performed by major US orchestras that the selection of his Serenade No.1 for this program is a true breath of fresh programming air. The modern, contemporary compositions by living composers are judiciously chosen for interest and respective length. And the final Masterworks program of the season (with two performances), in June 2025, is well chosen to display the orchestra's collective spirit for the annual conference/meeting of the League of American orchestras. It is only fitting that music director emeritus Thierry Fischer is scheduled to conduct that program, since he -- together with all of the musicians -- did so much to transform the responsiveness, sound, and collective spirit of the orchestra. My only suggestion would be that for future programming the Utah Symphony contemplate asking Thierry Fischer to program Sibelius symphonies 3-4, and 6-7 for a single upcoming season, possibly on consecutive back to back Masterworks weekends, like with Mahler's 5th and 6th symphonies for this upcoming season. Fischer has conducted all of Sibelius's seven symphonies with his orchestra in São Paulo, Brazil in the last year or so. I suspect that he Utah Symphony has not played the 4th and 6th symphonies on a public program for decades; the 3rd was last performed in August 2011 (only once under then associate conductor David Cho), and the 7th Symphony was last performed under music director Joseph Silverstein, later in his tenure from 1983-1998. At this point the selection of any new music director for the Utah Symphony is bound to be a bit of a close run thing. Absent any spectacular breakthroughs by upcoming guest conductors like Anna Rakitina, Delyana Lazarova, Elim Chan, or Christoph Koncz, and returning guest conductor Stephanie Childress, I think that returning guest conductor Markus Poschner could end up being an excellent choice for the next music director of the Utah Symphony. I suspect that he is interested in the position, has interesting ideas about programming for the Masterworks Series, has sufficient rapport with enough of the musicians, and likes the local geography, weather, and community. I doubt any guest conductor under consideration and interested in the position of music director has been or will be like a "strike of lightning" like when Thierry Fischer first conducted the Utah Symphony in October 2007 in two concerts with Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique,