The new leader of the Utah Symphony is embracing Utah’s pioneer spirit — and fighting for Abravanel Hall

Markus Poschner didn’t know much about Utah when he first visited in 2022.
The 2002 Winter Olympics had made him aware of Salt Lake City. He knew about the national parks and the state’s great outdoors.
And as a conductor born and raised in Munich, Germany, who has spent the past several years leading the Bruckner Orchestra Linz in Austria, he was aware of Maurice Abravanel and the Utah Symphony — who together in the 1960s performed and recorded Gustav Mahler’s symphonies at a time “when almost nobody did Mahler,” he said.
It was a risky undertaking, he said, that helped solidify the symphony as a major American orchestra.
In late 2022, Poschner entered Abravanel Hall in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City for the first time to lead the Utah Symphony in a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
It marked his U.S. conducting debut, and it didn’t take long at all for him to fall in love.
“From the very first moment, I was really very excited,” he said. “Because the standard was so high, the level of performance, the highly skilled musicians, … it was quite clear after the first two minutes.”
At that time, Poschner said he wasn’t aware the Utah Symphony was on the hunt for a new music director following Thierry Fischer’s dynamic 14-year tenure. But now, he’s officially taking the helm of the first American orchestra he ever conducted.
The Utah Symphony recently concluded its search for music director with Poschner’s appointment, announcing that the German conductor will begin his role immediately and assume full responsibilities in the 2027-28 season.
While in town for performances with the Utah Symphony this weekend, Poschner spoke with the Deseret News at the Grand America Hotel — where he’s been staying with his family for the past several days — about his lifelong passion for leading an orchestra and his plans to bring that thrill to life inside Abravanel Hall and throughout Utah.
Poschner has a towering presence, but there’s a warmth in his appearance.
His smile is wide as he talks about his wife, Elvira, and his three children (his oldest son currently studies law in Berlin).
And when he talks about his own parents, who surrounded him with music from an early age, or his excitement to explore a different part of the world while living in Salt Lake City and leading the Utah Symphony, there’s a sort of musicality in his tone. His voice rises and falls with dramatic effect, as if he were conducting his own story.
He seems sincere when he says he believes he could teach just about anyone how to conduct — at least from a technical standpoint — in a couple of hours. But conducting is so thrilling, he says, because it’s about so much more than waving your arms.
And he learned that fairly early on.
His father was a conductor and his mother taught piano, and while he did at one time consider pursuing a performance career in piano — he holds a special interest in jazz — he came to learn that for him, the thrill of sitting at a piano paled in comparison to standing at the center of an orchestra and feeling the power and vibrations of all the instruments in unison washing over him.
Munich was a “sparkling place” in the 1990s, he said, filled with great conductors. He would often go and sit in on rehearsals — a training better than any university, he said. He studied in Munich and Berlin, assisting conducting greats including Sir Roger Norrington and Sir Colin Davis.
Through years of observation and practice, Poschner has discovered what, for him, is the main thrill that comes with waving a baton: convincing a group of musicians to follow his interpretations.
The most fun part of it all, he said, is that it changes day to day. This weekend, when he leads the Utah Symphony in a performance of Beethoven’s “Eroica” — a piece he has conducted countless times and one the orchestra has played many times — it’ll be different than any other time he’s done it.
“It’s not a period thing or (from) an ancient world. It’s our world today,” he said. “It has so much to do with understanding what’s beneath the music, beneath the text. What does it mean, all the black dots? To create your own vision, your own idea of how to bring an ensemble from A to B. How to bring people to do what you want, and do it really with full heart, that’s the secret.
“That’s definitely the secret, to convince people to follow your ideas, whatever it is, because it’s not about wrong and right, it’s not about the truth. What is the truth in music? What is the truth in art? It doesn’t exist,” he continued. “Because it’s always a very personal thing. It’s not possible to discuss or to decide what is better, blue or red or green — it’s very personal. You can decide for just a moment, for today, and maybe tomorrow is different. So that’s the game.”
After years of leading a number of orchestras and operas throughout Europe, Poschner is ready to start a new chapter with the Utah Symphony.
He knows a little more about Utah now than he did two years ago, but he still hasn’t made it to a national park. With meetings and rehearsals and finalizing his appointment as music director, most of his exploration so far has been limited to within the walls of Abravanel Hall.
But through programming music and working with the symphony musicians, he knows he can do a lot of exploring through centuries of time and culture.
“Utah, as I see it, there’s a quite strong culture of pioneers, or exploring,” he said. “And that’s exactly my job as a conductor — I’m an explorer. You scratch a little bit of dust from stones, or just refurbish things to see what’s beneath — new colors, new ideas. And I think that’s exactly what Abravanel stood up for, for this sort of exploring, as he did Mahler during a decade when almost nobody did Mahler.”
Poschner brings a wealth of knowledge regarding European music and history to Utah. But he’s not interested in simply replicating what he’s done before — that wouldn’t be fair to him or his Utah audiences, he said.
“My role now, as I understand it, is to listen first,” he said. “That’s not my job, just to add things I brought with me from Europe — that’s quite boring. I would love to share it, to change it, and to find new answers which are really only working here, because that’s more authentic, that’s more thrilling, that makes more sense for me. … I don’t want to repeat myself. I’m here to make my own new experiences.”
During a recent Utah Symphony rehearsal, Poschner took a moment to step down from the stage and go out into the hall.
He listened to the musicians from the vantage point of the audience. The music rang throughout the concert hall, which seats roughly 2,800, and it confirmed Poschner’s first impression of the venue: Abravanel Hall is a high-quality facility, among some of the best he’s ever stepped foot in, he said.
Poschner knows he’s joining the Utah Symphony at somewhat of a delicate time, when the status of Abravanel Hall has been shrouded in some uncertainty amid a proposed downtown Salt Lake City revitalization project, as the Deseret News has reported.
The building was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places — a move that doesn’t legally prevent alterations or demolition, but does significantly raise awareness of the building’s historic value, per Deseret News.
Poschner said he isn’t opposed to some renovations or improvements, but he added that getting rid of a concert hall that represents the powerful connection between Abravanel and the Utah Symphony would affect the heart of the orchestra.
“For me, it’s absolutely clear: It’s a part of our identity,” he said. “An orchestra never can exist without the building. … The hall is part of our sound, it’s part of our world, and that’s why you cannot just say, ‘OK, let’s blow it away and do something new.’ It would change everything.
“It should be for everybody clear that this is part of our history.”