Thierry Fischer returned to NOVA Chamber Music Series to conduct a spectacular performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

The quartet’s performance accentuated properly all of the work’s emotional swings, extricating the Shostakovich trademarks of heartfelt lyricism morphing to simmering anger and finally withering ferocity. The Fry Street Quartet’s supreme commitment to sincerity of interpretation never wavered, whether it was in the opening pizzicato, the intense Adagio, the sprightly played Allegretto or the hurricane-like force of the final movement. 

NOVA’s March 13 Songs of Play concert brought two delightful premieres to Salt Lake City.

A rare all-British NOVA Chamber Music Series concert was an exquisite treat last weekend for the organization’s only Gallery Concert of the current season in the G. W. Anderson Family Great Hall of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

No better way to enjoy a spectacular, mild Sunday afternoon came than in the second subscription concert of the NOVA Chamber Music Series, which presented six short works with the theme of Songs of Life.

The pure, transparent chords by the Fry Street Quartet, starting with the upward major sixth in the first violin, which make up the first three minutes in Beethoven’s Heiliger Dankgesang (Holy Song of Thanksgiving, Opus. 132), set the ideal opening of NOVA Chamber Music Series’ new season and return to Libby Gardner Hall at The University of Utah after the long pandemic hiatus.

In the performance, Smith curates an ideal sampler to introduce viewers and listeners to a composer, whom he hopes people will be motivated to learn more about, as they deepen and lengthen their appreciation of chamber music.

A transfixing film that signifies the enlightened intertwining of science, social conscience, music and art

A deeply invigorating afternoon of music-making

Fierce Grace, the most recent NOVA Chamber Music Series’ concert, was more than a credible parallel where music and song stood in for the stemwinders one might have heard at a political rally during the suffragette and civil rights movements.

The recent Contrasts concert made for an ideal season centerpiece

The utmost clarity of technical execution and emotional expression

NOVA’s musicians seem eternally fearless.

The Utah Enlightenment is about remaking the spaces where art and creative expression occur and this Odyssey program was as brilliant a case study as seen recently in the local arts scene.