The Orchestra at Temple Square’s 2017 fall concert will take place in the Tabernacle on Temple Square on Friday, October 27, and Saturday, October 28, at 7:30 p.m. Igor Gruppman will conduct the all-volunteer orchestra.

Tickets for the concert are free and will be available beginning Tuesday, September 19, 2017, at 10:00 a.m. (Mountain Daylight Time) at lds.org/events or by calling 801-570-0800 or toll-free 1-866-537-8457. There is a limit of four tickets per person. Admission is open to those eight and older. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Patrons should be in their seats by 7:15 p.m.

The concert will open with the Mozart Piano Concerto no. 23 in A Major (K. 488), with guest pianist Arsentiy Kharitonov. In one of the most productive periods of Mozart’s life, 1782 to 1786, he wrote 15 piano concertos which were his primary source of income while he was also working on the opera The Marriage of Figaro. Concerto no. 23 was finished on March 2, 1786, and was one of three subscription concerts given that spring. Although it’s not documented, many believe Mozart himself played at one of these concerts.

The second half of the concert presents composer Jean Sibelius’s Symphony no. 2 in D Major, op. 43, the most popular and most frequently recorded of his symphonies. Sibelius refers to his second symphony as “a confession of the soul,” the first notes of which were written while he was wintering in a mountain villa near Rapallo, Italy. The symphony premiered on March 8, 1902, with Sibelius conducting. After three sell-out performances, revisions were made and the piece was performed again on November 10, 1903, to rave reviews. Sibelius later wrote of this work, “It is as if the Almighty had thrown down the pieces of a mosaic for heaven’s floor and asked me to put them together.”

The Orchestra at Temple Square was established in 1999 as a companion ensemble to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Each week up to 85 musicians, drawn from a roster of nearly 200 volunteers, provide instrumental support to the Choir in the weekly broadcast of Music & the Spoken Word. The Orchestra performs with the Choir in joint concerts as well as presenting its own fall symphonic concert in the Tabernacle. Since its founding, members of the Orchestra have performed on tour with the Choir. Like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Orchestra members serve as musical goodwill ambassadors for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.