New VSO Music Director Takes the Baton 

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• Courtesy Of Richie Lubaton
• Andrew Crust

On Saturday, September 30, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra will perform under the baton of its first new music director in more than two decades: Andrew Crust. Yes, that Andrew Crust — the one whose name Cate Blanchett's imperious conductor character in the movie Tár tosses out as a possible replacement for the assistant conductor she has just sacked.

The scene came as a surprise to Crust, who heard of it from a friend attending the film's Los Angeles premiere.

In real life, Crust, who also conducts the Lima Symphony Orchestra in Ohio and regularly guest conducts with orchestras around the country, will lead a concert of Romantic-era music on the Flynn Main Stage. The program features Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Bedich Smetana and culminates with Johannes Brahms' Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor, Op. 102. It will be an evening of soaring melodies, thrilling timpani rolls and minor-to-major-key climaxes.

The Brahms and the two young soloists who will play it — violinist Simone Porter and cellist Joshua Roman — were already programmed when Crust was named to his new position in March. The double concerto is a nod to Crust's beloved predecessor, conductor-violinist Jaime Laredo, who helmed the orchestra for 20 years: The VSO last performed the work in 2003 with Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson as the soloists.

Fortunately, Crust said during a phone call, "Brahms is one of my top-three favorite composers of all time." (Gustav Mahler figures second, and third place depends on whom he's studying, he said.)

The conductor noted the double concerto's origin story. "It's the last piece [Brahms] wrote for orchestra," he said. "I think it's very personal for him, a kind of olive branch composition for [his estranged violinist friend] Joseph Joachim." (Brahms' letter supporting Joachim's wife was used against Joachim in his divorce trial.) "In my mind, the cello represents Brahms."

Crust chose British composer Coleridge-Taylor's dramatic Ballade in A Minor and selections from early Czech nationalist Smetana's symphonic cycle Má Vlast ("My Fatherland") to round out the Romantic context. The two works were composed in the decades after and before Brahms' 1887 double concerto, respectively.

Explaining his programming, Crust said, "My vision going forward is to try and always provide something the audience doesn't know but will love" — in this case, the Coleridge-Taylor — "and an anchor piece that people will go away singing" — namely, the "Moldau" movement of Má Vlast. He added that he plans to program every Flynn concert with "at least one female composer or composer of color." (Coleridge-Taylor, whose father was from Sierra Leone, checks the box this time).

The VSO concert is subtitled "A New Beginning," which Crust said describes "a celebration of the start of our 89th season, a time to reflect on our past and Jaime Laredo's tenure, a chance [for audiences and the musicians] to get to know me," all while "I'm getting to know this new orchestra through sound."

"When there's someone new holding the stick," he said, "everything changes."