Utah Arts Review

A week ago, the Utah Symphony’s Friday concert had a dramatic and abrupt ending when the associate principal oboist, James Hall, experienced a medical emergency and collapsed towards the end of the third movement of the opening work, Mozart’s Symphony No. 35. After he was taken to the hospital, a staff member eventually came onstage and announced that the remainder of the concert would be cancelled.

Citing HIPAA laws, the Utah Symphony declined to provide details on the reason for Hall’s collapse. The symphony did release a brief statement on social media Thursday saying, “We’re glad to report that James is recovering well at home, and he expresses sincere gratitude to his colleagues and to the doctors who stepped up. We’re heartened to know that our audience and entire USUO family has been with us in healing thoughts.”

Fortunately, nothing that momentous happened at this Friday’s Utah Symphony performance, and the concert, featuring the symphony’s newly appointed music director Markus Poschner and violinist Charles Yang, proceeded without incident.

Yang, a member of the group Time for Three, which has appeared with the Utah Symphony on several concerts over the years, gave an effusive account of Kris Bowers’ violin concerto, For a Younger Self. Bowers has spent his career writing scores for movies and television, including the series Bridgerton. He wrote the concerto for Yang, who premiered it in 2020 with the now-disbanded American Youth Symphony of Los Angeles.

As one might expect, For a Younger Self is quite cinematic in its treatment and rather rhapsodic in its presentation and repetition of motives. Bowers writes in a lushly romantic style with frequent soaring melodies reminiscent of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto. And even in the more rhythmically vibrant sections the music never strays out of a rich tonal palette.

Yang captured the essence of the work with his melodic approach that underscored the lyricism that flows through each of the three movements — from the warmly expressive passages that alternate with the more brightly rhythmic sections in the first movement, to emphasizing the gently flowing lines of the middle movement, which also infuse the cadenza in that movement, to the soaring lines with staccato accompaniment from the orchestra in the finale. 

And for Poschner this was his second outing of the work with Yang, collaborating with him and  the Dallas Symphony last November. Poschner offered solid accompaniment that allowed the soloist to stand out while supporting him with his thoughtful direction.

In response to the audience’s wildly enthusiastic standing ovation, Yang returned to the stage and gave an unexpected and unconventional encore. He gave a bluesy account of Sam Cooke’s 1960s classic “A Change Is Gonna Come,” singing and accompanying himself with what can only be described as carefree abandon. 

After intermission Poschner dove into Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with a reading that embraced the depth, scope and grandness of the work. Poschner is a very detail-oriented conductor who never missed any of the subtleties of the music at Friday’s concert. Conducting without a score, Poschner’s account captured the work’s wide range of expression and nuanced dynamic shifts. He coaxed solid playing from the strings and never allowed the brass and percussion sections to overplay. He created a fine balance in the orchestral texture that served the music well.

In the opening movement, the German-born conductor transitioned smoothly between the softly flowing Largo and robust Allegro sections, while the following waltz movement was charmingly innocuous but never sentimental in expression.

Lissa Stolz opened the third movement with her gorgeously lyrical English horn solo, that was answered by principal oboist Zachary Hammond’s offstage playing and later, eerily, accompanied by two sets of timpani played by four timpanists. And Poschner elicited rich and expressive playing from the strings in this movement.

Poschner set a deliberately paced tempo for the following “March to the Scaffold” movement that captured the bold and dramatic tone that Berlioz creates here, and the conductor gave the audience a wild ride in the concluding “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” that brought out the unbridled passion of the music.

The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday. utahsymphony.org