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It's no secret that Utahns love the piano. So it's no surprise that the Utah Symphony is opening its season with three piano soloists in the span of seven days.

Beethoven expert Jonathan Biss is the soloist on opening night, kicking off the orchestra's seasonlong Beethoven piano-concerto cycle. Emanuel Ax will perform Beethoven's final work in the genre, the "Emperor," a week later. Sandwiched between them, Utah-born Mary Anne Huntsman will play the ever-popular Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 on a fund-raising gala concert.

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Biss plays Beethoven • Jonathan Biss has no memory of life without Beethoven; with violinists Miriam Fried and Paul Biss as his parents, early exposure to the great composer was inevitable. But he clearly remembers listening to a cassette tape of Rudolf Serkin playing the "Appassionata" Sonata every day for months, if not years, when he was around 10. A quarter-century later, Biss is not only one of the leading interpreters of Beethoven's music, he's also one of the world's most authoritative authors and lecturers on the subject and has spearheaded a project in which five contemporary composers are writing concertos inspired by Beethoven's. (He also has one of the most illuminating bios in the business.)

He'll perform Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 — which, as he's quick to point out, was actually the composer's third effort in the genre and the second one to survive — with the Utah Symphony and music director Thierry Fischer.

"What's really marvelous about the five concerti is that they're so incredibly different from each other," Biss said in a phone interview from his New York home. The one he's playing in Utah shows "incredible ingenuity," he said. "There's a sense in this piece of really trying to expand the boundaries of what a concerto could be. There's a sense of an enormous personality refusing to be contained."

The piece's brilliant, witty first and last movements contrast with "incredible profundity and spirituality" in the slow movement, the pianist said. "Right at the beginning, [Beethoven] has a way of making time stop. That's a really thrilling thing to experience as a person playing and a person listening." Beethoven wrote three options for the cadenza — a lengthy, virtuosic solo section — in the concerto's first movement. The one Biss is playing is "like the Big Bang," he said. "It's absolutely massive, and it goes into wild, woolly, unexpected areas. … You sense that Beethoven is not going to be hemmed in by convention or decorum."

Fischer, who hasn't performed with Biss but has heard him play in New York, is enthusiastic about the pianist's "fantastic, technically brilliant sound." This weekend's concerts will open with Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks" and close with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. "Let's have fun and play a piece the orchestra knows very well," Fischer said of the Tchaikovsky symphony.

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Utah roots • You could say that Mary Anne Huntsman is a bit of a nerd for Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. She heard it at the first Utah Symphony concert she ever attended, and she was smitten instantly.

"I thought it was the most beautiful piece I'd ever heard," Huntsman said. "I didn't realize music could be this beautiful. It moved me like nothing had. … The second movement brought me to tears." The 7-year-old told her parents, Mary Kaye Huntsman and Jon Huntsman Jr., that she wanted to play that piece with the orchestra someday, and they bought her a recording of the concerto — which she insisted on playing in the car until her siblings begged her to stop.

Rach 2, which Huntsman considers the "epitome of Romanticism," has continued to be a mainstay in her life. And yes, her childhood dream will come true on Sept. 13 when she plays the concerto with Fischer and the Utah Symphony in a black-tie gala concert.

Huntsman was born in Salt Lake City, the eldest of Jon and Mary Kaye Huntsman's seven children. She started piano lessons at age 3, but because her father's diplomatic career required frequent relocation, lessons were sometimes sporadic. Sometime after returning from Singapore at age 7, she auditioned for Gary Amano, director of piano studies at Logan's Utah State University, who has been her principal teacher and mentor ever since.

"Mary Anne was always a very special student," said Amano, who is impressed with Huntsman's clear sense of what works for her. "Because of her love of music, she's always getting better and better."

After studying at Utah State University, the University of Utah and the Manhattan School of Music, and playing a lot of chamber music in China while her father was U.S. ambassador there, Huntsman took a break from the keyboard to work on her father's 2012 presidential campaign. She and her sisters Liddy and Abby — the Jon 2012 Girls — made a splash in social media with their often-irreverent videos and tweets. "I didn't play [the piano] at all" during that time, Huntsman said. "I didn't know if I would go back. I really missed it."

When her dad, the former Utah governor, ended his campaign, she gave music another shot. Performances at embassies soon led to concerto and recital gigs in France, China and the United States. Huntsman — who is based in Washington, D.C., with her husband of nearly a year, Evan Morgan, and their French bulldog, Eleanor — also is working on an album of French music and toying with the idea of arranging a piano suite from the smash musical "Hamilton."

"There's never a dull moment" with Huntsman, said Utah-based pianist Josh Wright, a longtime friend who shared the stage at Carnegie Hall with Huntsman in 2014.

Susan Duehlmeier, head of the U. of U.'s piano area, concurred. "She possesses a strong technique, and her performances are colorful and imaginative," she said of Huntsman, who was a charter member of the U.-based outreach ensemble Ladies in Red.

The Sept. 13 Utah Symphony concert, a fundraiser for the orchestra, also features Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.

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Two cycles • The Utah Symphony's second subscription weekend continues one composer cycle and starts another. Emanuel Ax will be at the keyboard for the "Emperor" Concerto, and Fischer will lead the orchestra in the first of Johannes Brahms' four symphonies.

"This is the most ambitious artistic challenge we have done so far," said Fischer, noting that the orchestra "grew incredibly strongly" playing Gustav Mahler's nine completed symphonies over the course of the past two seasons. As monumental as the Mahler symphonies are, the conductor believes the stylistic and sonic challenges of the Brahms symphonies will stretch his players even further.

The concerts Sept. 16 and 17 in Abravanel Hall will open with Beethoven's "Fidelio" Overture.

By the way, there's a third musical cycle in store this season: The orchestra will perform the four symphonies of the great American composer Charles Ives, beginning in November. —

Keys to the season

The Utah Symphony opens its season with three concerts featuring popular piano concertos. Tickets start at $21, with discounts for students and groups; information at utahsymphony.org.

Where • Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple

Biss plays Beethoven 1

When • Friday and Saturday, Sept. 9-10, 7:30 p.m.

Rach 2 with Huntsman

When • Tuesday, Sept. 13, 7 p.m.

Also • The black-and-white gala includes a preconcert cash bar in the lobby, a VIP tent with buffet dinner and a postconcert party. Information at vipevents@usuo.org.

Ax the 'Emperor'

When • Friday and Saturday, Sept. 16-17, 7:30 p.m.