I have been looking forward to the opening weekend of the Utah Symphony 2016-2017 season for quite a while. It has been too long since I've seen the orchestra perform in Abravanel Hall! Much too long! However, it was worth the wait because the opening concert last night featured one of my favorite composers and it was a wonderful performance! The orchestra began with Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. This piece was commissioned by George II to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession and I really enjoyed it, especially the brass fanfares throughout. It was very dignified and majestic. Then pianist Jonathan Biss joined the orchestra for Beethoven's Concerto No. 1. This piece reminded me a lot of Mozart (at intermission I read in the program that many of Beethoven's earliest works were influenced by Mozart) and I loved it. Biss was absolutely incredible and I enjoyed watching his fingers literally fly across the keyboard. Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 5, the piece I had been waiting for, came after the intermission and it certainly didn't disappoint! I love Tchaikovsky because his music is so emotional and it is so quintessentially Russian. The orchestra played with so much passion that they almost blew the roof off Abravanel Hall! I loved the plaintive theme played by the woodwinds in the first movement and the horn solo in the second movement was amazing! The final movement is incredibly stirring and, even though this piece is filled with melancholy and yearning, I think that the ending is, ultimately, triumphant. This concert is being performed again tonight and I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here).
Note: This concert was our first chance to see Madeline Adkins, the new Concertmaster. I really like the fact that both the Concertmaster and the Associate Concertmaster (Kathryn Eberle) are women. Girl power!
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