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Music

Meeting demands of himself and his music

By JOHN FLEMING
Published March 23, 2006

Keith Lockhart is one of the busiest conductors around. As leader of the Boston Pops and music director of the Utah Symphony, his calendar is blocked out about 37 weeks a year, plus he also does plenty of guest conducting, such as his engagement this week with the Florida Orchestra.

So when he had a rare break in his schedule, the conductor was off to Brussels. And music was the last thing on his mind. Asked what he did on his four-day vacation in mid March, Lockhart said, "Eat, drink, sleep late, take long walks, sit on the town square with a cup of coffee, all the good things. I try to go to a place like Brussels, which is not like London or Paris where you feel compelled to do too much because there's so much to do.''

Lockhart, 46, is in his eighth season as head of the Utah Symphony, and this summer will be his 12th season with the Boston Pops. There's some synergy between the two.

In addition to the masterworks programs Lockhart conducts in Utah, he also is on the podium for several pops programs, "which is unusual, except that it would seem kind of silly, given my profile, not to do any pops,'' he said. "I kind of like the idea of the music director doing something on every one of the series, showing that all of them are worthy of their attention, not just saving themselves for the serious stuff.''

It's not uncommon for Lockhart to present pops programs that have been popular in Boston to Salt Lake City. "It's a nice value-added thing,'' he said. "Because of my connection to the Boston Pops, I can really do something pretty exciting here that would be hard for most regional orchestras to do.''

The Boston Pops audience is changing dramatically from the days when legendary conductor Arthur Fiedler presented a specific mix of music. "The concerts were supposed to be like Heinz 57, a little of this, a little of that,'' Lockhart said. "You had to have your light classic moment; you had to have your popular concerto; and you had to have some Leroy Anderson and John Philip Sousa.''

Today, to cultivate a younger audience, Lockhart and the Pops share the stage with rock bands. "Last season, we brought in Guster, which has a huge college following. And once we had this crowd of 19- to 23-year- olds there, we played music of revolution for them, which for us meant Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun. This coming season we're bringing in the singer-songwriter Aimee Mann and a group called My Morning Jacket.''

Though acknowledging that Salt Lake City is "a very conservative market,'' Lockhart said he has worked to introduce new music, such as works by Gabriela Frank and Kevin Puts. At the same time, he has returned to the orchestra's roots by performing a Mahler symphony every season. During the long tenure of music director Maurice Abravanel, Utah was the first orchestra to record a Mahler cycle.

In 2002, Lockhart managed to program the Mahler Eighth Symphony, the mighty "Symphony of 1,000,'' so named because of the number of performers required. "We did Eight with our chorus and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and 150 children,'' he said. "We did a symphony of about 900, downsizing for the new century, in the Tabernacle, for about 11,000 people who heard it over two nights.''

This weekend, Lockhart will conduct a challenging but crowd-pleasing work by Poland's major 20th century composer, Witold Lutoslawski. "People get scared because they don't really know Lutoslawski's name, and if they do, they think he must write difficult modern music,'' he said. "But you can really hear the Polish folk music in it, and it's rhythmically exciting.''

Also on the program is the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 with Artur Girsky as the soloist. Girsky, formerly the Florida Orchestra's principal second violin, is now a member of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. Lockhart will open the concert with what he calls "a palate cleanser,'' Mozart's Symphony No. 34 in C Major.

In Utah, Lockhart said, he has taken some flak for not programming a lot of Mozart this year, the 250th anniversary of his birth. "I'm not a big believer in birthdays, my own or anybody else's. For me, it's a very used car salesman way of selling a composer. Why are Mozart's works more significant in 2006 than they were in 2005 or than they will be in 2007? It's a false reason to celebrate the composer. The composer should be celebrated every year.''

John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or 727 893-8716.

[Last modified March 22, 2006, 12:22:13]