Holst’s
THE PLANETS
An HD Odyssey
Utah Aerospace & Defense Industry Night
MARCH 28, 2025 / 7:30 PM / MAURICE ABRAVANEL HALL
MARCH 29, 2025 / 7:30 PM / MAURICE ABRAVANEL HALL
PAOLO BORTOLAMEOLLI , conductor
AUSTIN MCWILLIAMS , chorus director UTAH SYMPHONY CHORUS
JESSIE MONTGOMERY
MIGUEL FARÍAS
HOLST
Hymn for Everyone
Retratos Australes (Southern Portraits)
I. Tirana
II. Minga
III. Chinchinero
INTERMISSION
The Planets, Suite for Large Orchestra, Opus 32 Mars, the Bringer of War Venus, the Bringer of Peace Mercury, the Winged Messenger Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age Uranus, the Magician Neptune, the Mystic
CONCERT SPONSOR
USUO is excited to partner with 47G to celebrate Utah’s Aerospace & Defense Industry during our presentation of Holst’s The Planets. Join us before each performance to learn more about Utah’s Aerospace & Defense industry!
ORCHESTRA SPONSOR
CHORUS
Sopranos
Jenny Andrus
Rebekah Barton Stockton
Abigail Bendixsen
Julia Bigelow
Caitlyn Bramble
Erin Bramscher
Christina Brandt
Altos
Maya Allred
MJ Ashton
Naomi Bawden
Sara Bayler
Catherine Beck
Katherine Filipescu
Paolo Bortolameolli Conductor
Chilean-Italian conductor Paolo Bortolameolli is a prolific force on the podium, a talented lecturer, and advocate for the arts.
Notable debuts between 2022 and 2024 include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Hong Kong Philharmonic, as well as returns to the Hollywood Bowl, Kansas City Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires, and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia. He has led ensembles and built relationships with orchestras around the world such as Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolivar in Caracas, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Haydn Orchestra in Bolzano, Gulbenkian Orchestra in Portugal, and the Orchestra della Toscana in Florence. Recent opera productions include Tosca at the Opéra de Paris, Die Zauberflöte and Madama Butterfly at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and Golijov’s Ainadamar at Detroit Opera, as well as performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Ópera Nacional de Chile and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional Juvenil which marked the monumental work’s premiere in Chile.
Austin
McWilliams
Chorus Director
Austin McWilliams is a conductor and countertenor who specializes in contemporary vocal music. He strives to present compelling, intriguing art that is directly relevant to the communities in which it is performed. He began his tenure as Chorus Director & Opera Assistant Conductor at Utah Symphony | Utah Opera with the 2024/25 season.
Previously Austin was Associate Conductor and Chorus Master at Opera Grand Rapids, Head of Music at West Michigan Opera Project, and Co-Artistic Director at Ad Astra Music Festival. In Grand Rapids he was the choir director at his beloved Fountain Street Church, a non-denominational, non-creedal institution that serves as a venue for heterodox speakers and ideologies. Content in both the rehearsal hall and classroom, Austin has served as the Director of Choral Activities at Aquinas College and as adjunct faculty and opera conductor at Western Michigan University, where he studied with Kimberly Dunn Adams. He is also a faculty member at Missouri Scholars Academy, a governor’s school for gifted high school juniors in his native state.
Isabella Carlton
Lauren Cartwright Bohannan
A.Elizabeth Davis
Alexis Dazley
Kaylynne Fox
Olivia Fryer
Emelia Hartford
Kate Fitzgerald
Jennifer Hancock
Annette Jarvis
Catherine Jeppsen
Angela Keeton
Jeanne Leigh-Goldstein
Macy Kelson
Rachel Kibler
Jeanne Lancaster
Audrey Meservy
Abby Payne-Peterson
Erin Rubin
Natalie Sandberg
Sylvia Miera-Fisk
Kate Olsen
Brittany Rogers
Anastasia Romanovskaya
Jenica Sedgwick
Sue Sohm
Michaela Shelton
Margaret Steele
Margaret Straw
Carolyn Talboys-Klassen
Shichun Wang
Cassie Weintz
Lindsay Whitney
Cherry Lynn Stewart
Michelle Swenson
Jennifer Taylor
Sammie Tollenstrup
Valerie Wadsworth
By Jeff Counts
Hymn for Everyone
Duration: 12 minutes.
THE COMPOSER – JESSIE MONTGOMERY (b. 1981) –Named Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year, Jessie Montgomery is among the most sought-after talents in classical music. She is a GRAMMY winner and has received many other honors, including the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship to work amongst handpicked artists from multiple disciplines at an Umbrian castle. Montgomery’s list of commissions is equally impressive and features contributions to virtually every genre. Her selection as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead ComposerIn-Residence in 2021 placed her in the footsteps of highly successful peers and offered the opportunity to create five new works over the course of her three-year tenure.
THE HISTORY – First out of the commission gate for Montgomery during her run as the Mead Composer-inResidence was the orchestral chorale Hymn for Everyone Her own program note for the work states: “Hymn for Everyone is based on a hymn that I wrote during the spring of 2021 that was a reflection on personal and collective challenges happening at the time. Up to that point, I had resisted composing ‘response pieces’ to the pandemic and social-political upheaval, and had been experiencing an intense writer’s block.” Montgomery continues: “But one day, after a long hike, this hymn just came to me – a rare occurrence. The melody traverses through different orchestral ‘choirs’, and is accompanied by the rest of the ensemble. It is a kind of meditation for orchestra, exploring various washes of color and timbre through each repetition of the melody.” In a short video introduction to the work for its Chicago Symphony premiere, Montgomery offered even more insight into the genesis of the work. “I was inspired by the hymn as a tradition of offering some solace,” she said, adding that the idea of a hymn was, “something to gather around and to sing collectively.” Montgomery did a contemporaneous interview about Hymn for Everyone with the long-time Chicago Sun-Times critic Wynne Delacoma in which the composer admitted that the work also served as a tribute to her mother. This was Robbie McCauley, a renowned performance artist and theater luminary who died in May of 2021. Completing the Hymn was “a bit of catharsis” for Montgomery. Hearing it can provide something similar for any among us who have lost someone.
power in Afghanistan, the United States made Juneteenth a federal holiday, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in Haiti and Tokyo hosted the summer Olympics after they were postponed due to COVID-19.
THE CONNECTION – These concerts represent the Utah Symphony premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s Hymn for Everyone
Retratos Australes (Southern Portraits)
Duration: 15 minutes in three movements.
THE COMPOSER – MIGUEL FARÍAS (b. 1983) –Venezuelan-Chilean writer and composer Miguel Farías began his musical life early. In a wonderful online interview in 2022 with fellow composer and friend Christian Baldini, Farías described how he taught himself piano at the age of 10 but found his artistic confidence a short time later with the guitar. Once Farías realized, at 14, that he wanted to create his own music, his path was set. Now in his 40s, Farías has an international career and numerous awards and commissions to his name. When not fulfilling his professorial duties at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Farías spends his time writing. He writes music, of course, for a world-wide list of ensembles and institutions, but that is not all. Farías also just published his first novel, Plástico.
THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 2021, the Taliban returned to
THE HISTORY – Retratos Australes (Southern Portraits) was commissioned by Fundación de Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Chile (FOJI) in 2019 as part of their orchestra’s tour to Europe and Africa under the direction of Maestro Maximiano Valdes. FOJI is dedicated to “promoting the social, cultural and educational development of [Chile’s] young people” and prides itself on “bringing concert music to all people, without distinction”. Farías served briefly as their Executive Director from 2022. The premiere of Retratos Australes took place at the Berlin Konzerthaus as part of the Young Euro Classic festival for youth orchestras from around the world. Set in three movements, which Farías calls “narrative soundpaintings”, the music is energetic and highly colorful, with South American folk idioms and contemporary classical music techniques in constant tension. Movement 1, Tirana, depicts “the idea of being in the desert with the Fiesta de la Tirana [an annual celebration of the Virgen del Carmen] approaching.” Movement 2, Minga, reflects on the Chiloé Island tradition
of moving houses (yes, entire houses!) with teams of oxen. It is “a big [musical] voyage”, according to Farías, “where different sonorities appear [with] hidden quotations from Mahler.” Movement 3, Chinchinero, honors the urban street performers who wear drums and cymbals on their back while performing various acrobatic dances. “If you watch the videos of chinchineros,” Farías told me, “you’ll find that they start spinning and reaching really high speeds. This movement tries to recreate that…and the drum sounds too, of course.”
THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 2019, Notre Dame Cathedral burned, protesters took to the streets in Hong Kong, Donald Trump became the third President in U.S. history to be impeached and Japan’s Emperor Hirohito abdicated.
THE CONNECTION – These concerts represent the Utah Symphony premiere of Miguel Farías’ Retratos Australes.
The Planets
Duration: 51 minutes in seven movements.
THE COMPOSER – GUSTAV HOLST (1874-1934) – In the years prior to the Great War, Gustav Holst was already settled into a comfortable academic life. His post at the St. Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith was but one among the many he held, but it was there that he would stay until his death in 1934. It was a perfect atmosphere for a composer of Holst’s carefully measured ambition and the seclusion it offered made room for much creativity. In fact, when a new music wing was opened at St. Paul’s in 1913, it included a soundproof studio for Holst. In that hushed, private space he would compose many works, from the humble St. Paul Suite to the grand galactic travel guide that made him famous.
THE HISTORY – Given its proximity to the start of WWI and the martial theme of the first movement, it is logical
to assume The Planets was Holst’s “war piece.” That still seems a sensible assumption over one hundred years later, but the truth is that he began work on the music before hostilities commenced and it seems unlikely, then or later, that it was intended as a political statement. The Planets was unique among Holst’s compositions to that point, and it represented a synthesis of his interests in astrology and Theosophy. For those who might not know, theosophy was a late 19th century philosophy that drew from ancient religious and mythological traditions to teach access to the divine through mysticism. Astrology, well, everyone knows what that is, and Holst enjoyed casting horoscopes for his close friends. In addition to mixing celestial concepts, high and low, The Planets also displayed Holst’s ability to personalize the prevailing musical trends of his day. Both Schoenberg and Stravinsky toured England prior the creation of The Planets and their concerts clearly had a powerful effect on Holst. Each of the seven (excluding Earth and the then undiscovered Pluto) tone portraits that make up the suite are brilliant, colorful portrayals of the Roman Gods for whom each planet is named. It is fascinating to hear Holst’s typically economical voice “turned loose” on such a luxuriously large orchestral palette. Epic-scale composition was not something that came easily to him, according to his daughter, Imogen. Perhaps that is why Holst never did anything quite like it again. Or maybe he never tried to repeat the feat because the immediate popularity of The Planets after the 1920 “full” premiere (parts had been performed in 1919 after a private concert the year before) led to an annoying public expectation that he did everything after would be derivative of it. Composers often accept their legacies grudgingly and for Holst, the notion that all his work would be judged against The Planets was a frustration that lasted the rest of his days.
THE WORLD – Elsewhere in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union was created, Explorer Robert Peary died, the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire’s began, the very first “Ponzi” scheme was launched and Joan of Arc was canonized.
THE CONNECTION – The last time Utah Symphony performed The Planets on the Masterworks Series was in 2019. Thierry Fischer conducted.