Review » There's a lot more to American music than Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, as the Utah Symphony demonstrated Friday night.

The first half of the program had a Hollywood connection: a suite drawn from John Williams' score to Oliver Stone's "JFK" and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violin Concerto, which incorporates several themes from the naturalized American composer's film scores.

Viviane Hagner, a frequent Utah Symphony guest, was the soloist in the Korngold. Hagner displayed a nimble technique, but her emotionally restrained reading didn't really catch fire until the concerto's final pages.

The concert's second half was devoted to the "extraordinary, unique, iconoclastic American composer" Charles Ives, in the words of music director Keith Lockhart, who interspersed the selections with interesting biographical tidbits. The "Country Band March" is an exuberant collision of popular tunes, musical styles and meters, and pianist Jason Hardink and the orchestra's percussion section gave it extra zip. Lockhart drew a beautifully focused sound from the strings in "The Unanswered Question," which featured increasingly agitated woodwinds and a strong central performance by trumpeter Jeff Luke (who also had a heroic turn in the "JFK" Suite). A truly magical moment involving offstage bells capped a fine performance of Ives' Symphony No. 3. The evening ended with William Schuman's exhilarating orchestration of Ives' quintessentially American Variations on "America."

Catherine Reese Newton is a music critic. Contact her at creese@sltrib.com or 801-257-8616. Send comments to livingeditor@sltrib.com.