Though Thierry Fischer said he aimed to treat his final week leading the Utah Symphony just like any other week, the audience’s gleeful, enthusiastic response to Friday night’s performance at Salt Lake City’s Abravanel Hall showed they knew it wasn’t just another concert.
The hall wasn’t quite full — the back rows stood mostly empty — but when Fischer stepped onto the stage, the audience welcomed him with a round of applause, and many stood up to greet him, all before the orchestra played a note.
Friday’s program featured Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, which Fischer described as a journey of creation. The performance was, itself, a triumph of musical creation.
The audience clapped at the end of the first movement, which clocked in at 35 minutes — a hefty length for a full symphony, let alone a single movement. The audience was quiet after the dreamy, delicate second movement.
After the third movement — a gorgeous swell of music — members of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square and children wearing their blazers from the Madeleine Choir School stepped onto the stage, along with Swedish mezzo-soprano Anna Larsson.
As Larsson sang in the fourth movement, the translated Nietzsche text about mankind was projected in supertitles on a drop screen at the back of the stage. In the fifth and final movement, the two choirs created the interesting juxtaposition of the youthful sound of children and the wise voices of adults — a combination Fischer has compared to the sound of angels.
One of Nietzsche’s translated lines summarized the night best: “But all joy seeks eternity, seeks deep, deep eternity.”
Fischer, the orchestra, and both choirs received a standing ovation that lasted minutes after they wrapped up. On the supertitle screen, a simple three-word message was projected: “Thank you, Thierry!”
In the Abravanel Hall lobby before the show, the audience could read a series of signs on stands, displaying Fischer’s accolades and highlights of his 14 years leading the Utah Symphony — such as the Adopt-A-School initiative, and works he commissioned and premiered.
During his tenure, Fischer has conducted 326 concerts with the symphony throughout the state, played host to 126 guest soloist debuts, tutored more than 100 musicians in Haiti and more than 50 students at Cottonwood High School, hired 47 musicians, completed nine commercial recordings, conducted five Utah Opera productions, and led the Utah Symphony through two statewide tours and one concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Fischer, who is Swiss, has already begun his next gig, conducting the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra in Brazil. He will continue to hold the title of Music Director Emeritus with the Utah Symphony.
Fischer will wrap up his tenure with Utah Symphony on Saturday, 7:30 p.m., at Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple, Salt Lake City. The program again will consist of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. A few tickets are still available, from $20 to $53, at utahsymphony.org.
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