The purpose of Classical Connections is to further engage Utah Symphony guests during their experience at the hall, offering a new level of contextual understanding about the various connections that each performance has to other disciplines, art forms, and community issues. It’s basically another way for us to make your experience at the symphony as insightful and enjoyable as possible!

In the coming weeks, you can plan on seeing the display at most concerts, with various rotating content topics that relate to that evening’s repertoire. This past weekend, Classical Connections featured information about the human voice and how it is such a versatile musical instrument. It was a pleasure for us to also work with the National Center for Voice and Speech to compile most of the educational content for this particular display.

Come join us this weekend for the Messiah Sing-In to see this particular content rotation of Classical Connections up in the lobby again, and don’t forget to share YOUR voice on the display’s comment board as well as with the 3,000-voice audience choir that will fill the hall each night!

We are very excited for the performance this weekend – Berlioz’ Childhood of Christ. If you’ve noticed a bit more Berlioz being programmed lately, it’s because our Music Director, Thierry Fischer, is a huge Berlioz fan. In his own words:

“I don’t just like Berlioz, I need to perform Berlioz very regularly. He’s a composer very close to my inspiration. He wrote music by putting his own life in music, so it’s very easy to identify all his troubles, fears, hopes, nightmares. His imagination was absolutely stupefying.”

Childhood of Christ is a very interesting work for many reasons. First, Berlioz was not a religious man, so the fact that he composed a “sacred trilogy”, as he called it, was unusual. But he was a huge fan of church music, so that was his inspiration. Second, it’s one of the few works of his that the audiences and critics of the time actually liked! They usually felt that his music was bizarre sounding, but they loved how simple and melodic this work is:

During the second performance on December 24, calls of “encore” drowned out the Alleluias at the end of “The Repose of the Holy Family,” prompting the composer to turn to the audience and shout, “We’re going to play the piece again, but this time please allow it to finish.”
- John Mangum, Program Designer/Annotator, Los Angeles Philharmonic

For such a beautiful work, it doesn’t get performed very often, perhaps because of the large chorus and soloists needed. If you’re a fan of choral music, this is a concert you won’t want to miss!

NPR Music had a great article two years ago about the piece, which includes a complete recording! Check it out!

“The concert, which also included music by Richard Wagner and American composer Christopher Rouse, showed new levels of stylistic definition and ensemble unity, especially during Beethoven’s programmatically descriptive symphony.”
- The Salt Lake Tribune

“Thierry Fischer continues to knock it out of the park with his Beethoven symphony cycle. The Utah Symphony, under Fischer’s guiding hand, painted a vivid musical picture and offered a clear window into the emotions of the three composers on the program Friday night.”
- Reichel Recommends

“holy geez, it was amazing; the entire orchestra did a phenomenal job, but the main percussionist—absolutely stupendous and literally had me holding my breath at the end.”
- LifeIsBYUtiful

Were you at the concert this weekend? Let us know what you thought! Please leave your review in the comments.

In honor of Halloween, Beethoven is exploring one of the quirkier landmarks in Salt Lake.

From the beginning of his life, Ludwig van Beethoven was destined for one full of fame, fortune and friction.  Named after his grandfather, a musician of the Roman Catholic Flemish Court, and one of three survivors of the seven children his parents bore, Ludwig van Beethoven was destined to carry the musical weight passed through generations of his family. In addition to his grandfather’s legacy, his own father was a tenor in the Electoral court and his first music teacher.

Beethoven studied as a young man with famous pianists such as Haydn, gaining a quick reputation as a virtuoso pianist in his early teens.  Studying abroad, Beethoven quickly returned home as his mother passed on and he raised his siblings while his father battled being an alcoholic.

Even as his name began to grow among Europeans and his talents were esteemed, his health began fading. Beethoven’s hearing gradually began deteriorating from a ringing in his ears to almost complete deafness as he continued to compose masterpieces, conduct, and perform. His encroaching deafness led him to contemplate suicide, and it is now rumored that he also battled bipolar disease. There is also speculation that he suffered from irritability brought on by chronic abdominal pain beginning in his 20’s attributed to lead poisoning that later resulted in his death.

Beethoven never married, but he was engaged to Giulietta Guiccardi, whose father was made thwarter of the lovers, and she joined in marriage to a noble man. Nevertheless, he had a close and devoted circle of friends all his life, thought to have been attracted by his reputed strength of personality. Towards the end of his life, Beethoven’s friends competed in their efforts to help him cope with his incapacities.

Completed in 1824, the Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 “Choral” was the last complete symphony composed by Ludwig van Beethoven.  It incorporated part of An die Freude (”Ode to Joy”), a poem by Friedrich Schiller written in 1785.

In the first performance of Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Beethoven pounded out the beats he couldn’t hear (his hearing now completely gone). According to one witness, “the public received the musical hero with the utmost respect and sympathy, listened to his wonderful, gigantic creations with the most absorbed attention and broke out in jubilant applause, often during sections, and repeatedly at the end of them.” Beethoven was given five standing ovations – people waved handkerchiefs in the air and raised their hands and hats so Beethoven, who was now deaf, could see the response. Never before had the theater seen such an enthusiastic response from the audience. In the end, he truly conducted an “Ode to Joy,” which may be a tribute to his life. Though it was hard, frustrating, and sometimes overwhelming, his was a fulfilled life that would be celebrated, at least nightly, somewhere around the world to this day.

Happy Birthday to English composer Sir Edward Elgar, who was born today in 1857.

We often consider Elgar to be one of the quintessential English composers, but he considered himself to be an outsider in many ways. Despite his differences in upbringing, musical training, and religion, he achieved popularity in his lifetime and enduring popularity after his death.

Elgar was one of the first classical musicians to recognize the importance of a new technology – the gramophone. He conducted recordings of many of his works, which are still available today.

Here’s a recording of his cello concerto, conducted by Elgar and recorded in 1928:

Many people know the ninth movement of Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” (known as the Nimrod Variation), but here’s the first few variations of the piece:

And here’s the beginning of the third movement of Elgar’s Violin Concerto:

Join us March 23-24, 2012 when Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” will be on the program.

But the Saint-Saëns symphony was the evening’s main attraction, and Elliott’s grand C-major chord midway through the second movement was worth the price of admission. Pianist Jason Hardink also shone, and Grams was generous in acknowledging the contributions of other orchestra members at the work’s exuberant conclusion.
- The Salt Lake Tribune

Elliott is a consummate artist and fabulous musician. It was wonderful seeing him outside his usual job accompanying the Tabernacle Choir and in the soloist’s spotlight in Abravanel Hall. And at Friday’s concert he gave a spectacular performance of the Poulenc.
- Reichel Recommends

Were you at the concert this weekend? Let us know what you thought! Please leave your review in the comments.

Lockhart has recruited a first-class quartet of soloists: soprano Indra Thomas, mezzo Marietta Simpson, tenor Russell Thomas and bass-baritone Derrick Parker. All sang with keen musical focus and emotional conviction on Friday, but Indra Thomas was first among equals, thanks largely to her stunning delivery of the spiritual “O, By and By.” The Utah Symphony Chorus, impeccably prepared by Susanne Sheston, also sang with dramatic power and clear diction.
- The Salt Lake Tribune

What did you think of the concert? Leave your review in the comments!

Want to check it out this weekend? Just leave a comment on this blog post! We’ll pick a winner at random on Thursday at 3 PM.

As befits a symphony about a painter, the Utah Symphony brought rich, almost saturated musical color to its interpretation.
- The Salt Lake Tribune

…guest clarinetist Ted Calcara completely enlivened and invigorated the near-capacity audience inside Abravanel Hall for the first of two performances of a music program leaning heavily on the compositions of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
- Salt Lake Magazine

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Matthias Bamert and the Utah Symphony. What more needs be said? Other than it was a sublime evening of music? It was that, but that hardly begins to describe the magic that was in the air when Bamert stepped onto the podium…
- Reichel Recommends

Let us know what you thought of the concert! Just leave your review in the comments.