In the often highfalutin world of classical music, organist Cameron Carpenter has acquired a reputation as not only a prodigious virtuoso, but also as a rebel, a pioneer, an iconoclast, a genius, a punk-rocking showboat, perhaps even a bit of a mad scientist.

It’s actually even more complicated than that.

Carpenter opens the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra’s Masterworks season this weekend, backed by reviews that resound with effusive praise.

“Everything he touches turns fantastical and memorable,” says a review in the New York Times. “One of the rare musicians who changes the game of his instrument,” a Los Angeles Times reviewer states.

Carpenter himself describes almost a love-hate relationship with the organ — he loves to play it, but the instrument itself is no friend.

“In a sense, the instrument is a tragedy. It’s one with which someone like me can only have a love affair that is fraught with difficulty and sorrow,” he said in an enlightening, sometimes amusing and continuously thought-provoking call from Sweden, where he was on tour. “I make no joke about that. I would never claim to love the organ. I have a very intense relationship with the organ, but love is not part of it.”

Carpenter’s problems with the organ come from nearly every angle: its place in history as primarily an instrument of the church — “a province of God,” he said with a touch of sarcasm; its unkind treatment of those who play it, hiding performers away in organ lofts; its sheer size and immobility, with thousands of pipes.

“The organ is an instrument which makes almost a parody of the amount of sacrifice required to be a musician,” he said, pointing out that organists usually don’t own their own instruments and are often employed at the whim of the churches who do.

CARPENTER HAS turned his attention to bringing the organ into the modern age. He has masterminded the creation of his own instrument, dubbed the International Touring Organ, a massive, five­-keyboard instrument that produces sound through electronic sampling of his favorite pipe organs from around the world.

For this concert, Carpenter will perform on an electric instrument loaned by symphony supporter Mark Wong, although Carpenter hopes to bring his instrument here some day.

As with all electronic organs, Carpenter’s instrument is much more responsive to the touch than a traditional, mechanical pipe organ, putting his lightning-quick fingerwork and tap dance-worthy pedaling technique on full display. The symphony will have video screens at the concert so that the audience can enjoy the show.

Carpenter himself sees his instrument as merely the inevitable development of technology. In keeping with the digital age and the “binary” system of computer coding and electricity — either on or off, no in between — when playing an organ, pressing a key is like turning on a light switch, creating a note of steady, unwavering volume. Lift the key, and the sound stops like a light going out.

“The evolution of the digital organ, and particularly the rise of the artistic digital organ, within the last 10, even eight years … is the seminal event in the 2,600-year history of the organ,” he said. “We are only in the very early days of understanding what the organist can be.”

He also sees his instrument as a genuinely “American” organ, one created in the tradition of the mighty Wurlitzers played at movies or civic events in the early 20th century. “They became kind of a symbol of American expansionism, a musical manifest destiny,” Carpenter said.

Carpenter grew up in Pennsylvania as a child prodigy who at a young age displayed his showmanship, wearing sequined clothing for his piano recitals. His interest in the organ originally was inspired not by its sound, but by a picture of an instrument that looked vaguely like the furnaces his father designed. Early in his career, he gained widespread attention not only for his fantastic technique and unusual repertoire — a YouTube video of Chopin’s “Revolutionary” Etude featured him playing its famously torrential baseline on pedals — but also his stage presence, which he accented with a mohawk haircut and trendy, urban streetwear, still with sequins, but relocated to his boot-like organ shoes.

Carpenter’s toned it down in recent years, with the mohawk shaved in deference to his deceased father, and the T-shirts replaced by a comfortably casual suit by designer Issey Miyake, but he still sees his stage appearance as representative of the “loneliness of the instrument” and “distaste for the general pretentiousness of classical music.”

He’s also still willing to mock those pretensions. Take, for example, a publicity photo of Carpenter in a tuxedo, which he says was “a kind of a practical joke.”

“I happen to be standing on the pedal board, and if you look carefully, you see the whole organ is drawn (all the stops are pulled),” he said. “So if that photo were real, the organ would be howling in disarray.”

For his appearance here, he is expected to play some works impromptu but is formally scheduled to perform Saint Saens’ Symphony No. 3, which has been dubbed “Organ” because two of its four sections use the organ, and Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Timpani and Strings, which Carpenter recently recorded with Christoph Eschenbach conducting the Berlin Concert House Orchestra.

“It’s a poem of deep suffering and sarcasm and criticism which we think is tied to the death of Poulenc’s lover, although these are things which are just beginning to be acknowledged,” he said. “It’s an extraordinary work for for the breadth of the emotional experience that is depicted in it. … There’s an aspect of the work that has a sort of quality of missed life — how droll, how strange, how tragic, and yet how beautiful.

“It’s my position that one of the best qualities of all music is its ability to allow us to suffer without feeling pain, and that’s deeply true of this piece.”

2018 CLASSICAL CONCERT SEASON LINEUP

This weekend’s symphony concerts launch the major part of the 2018-2019 classical music season for Hawaii.

Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra Executive Director Jonathan Parrish said things are looking up for the organization, with the symphony performing each of its 12 classical programs on both a Saturday and Sunday.

“There’s so much put into just one performance — four rehearsals, bringing in a conductor, bringing in a soloist,” he said. “The cost of doing a second show is very small compared to the potential net revenue for it.”

The symphony is trying to build Saturday attendance with some special perks. Audience members also will be allowed to bring beverages into the concert hall for these concerts, and there will also be gourmet food offerings and meet-and-greet opportunities: Those interested should contact the symphony on the Monday before a concert to reserve a place.

Local musicians will be a major feature this season, with principal cellist Mark Votapek featured in November and symphony concertmaster Iggy Jang soloing in late January, and former Honolulu Symphony Orchestra clarinetist David Shifrin performing Debussy and Weber in an “Arabian Nights” concert in April. Local pianist Lisa Nakamichi and Cliburn International Piano Competition winner Jon Nakamatsu, a frequent visitor to Hawaii, will perform Mozart in February.

Visiting artists of particular note this year are influential performer and teacher Yefim Bronfman, who will perform a Beethoven piano concerto in early January, and Grammy Award-winning violinist Augustin Hadelich, returning to close out the season in June.

Hawaii Opera Theatre will have a shortened season this year as it prepares for the likely long renovation period of the Blaisdell facility in a couple of years. This year’s season opens in October with Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” with coloratura soprano Amanda Woodbury making her Hawaii debut as Juliet, reprising the role she performed recently at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. In May, Hawaii’s home-grown opera star Quinn Kelsey returns in “La Traviata.” Co-starring will be Pene Pati, a favorite in Hawaii after his performances with New Zealand trio Sol3 Mio.

Hawaii’s chamber music season is also underway, with both Chamber Music Hawaii and the Honolulu Chamber Music Series already staging concerts. Remaining concerts of note are Iggy Jang’s “Tango Extravaganza” in November, which will offer not just great music but terrific dancing, and the Hawaiian Oboe Legacy Project in May, which will showcase a new oboe commissioned by symphony oboist Scott Janusch, made from rare kauila wood.

Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra

All concerts at Blaisdell Concert Hall. $34-$92; concerts marked with an asterisk are $27-$79; tickets for Dec. 12 “Holiday Pops” concert TBA, on sale Sept. 28; hawaiisymphony orchestra.org, 946-8742.

>> “Organ Symphony”: 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 4 p.m. Sunday

>> “JoAnn Rachs!”: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 27, 4 p.m. Oct. 28

>> * “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 3, 4 p.m. Nov. 4

>> “The Music of Pink Floyd”: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 9

>> “Votapek Plays Dvorak”: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 10, 4 p.m. Nov. 11

>> “Bohemian Journey”: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 17, 4 p.m. Nov. 18

>> “Holiday Pops”: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 12

>> “Ode to Joy”: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 5, 4 p.m. Jan. 6

>> “Classical Mystery Tour”: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 12, 4 p.m. Jan. 13

>> * “Filmed in Hawaii”: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 25

>> “Iggy!”: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 26, 4 p.m. Jan. 27

>> “Hans Graf Conducts Mozart & Bruckner”: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 23, 4 p.m. Feb. 24

>> * “Superhero Soundtrack”: 7:30 p.m. March 8

>> “Stu Conducts Brahms”: 7:30 p.m. March 9, 4 p.m. March 10

>> “Chopin & Schumann”: 7:30 p.m. March 23, 4 p.m. March 24

>> “Brass Transit”: 7:30 p.m. April 12

>> “Arabian Nights”: 7:30 p.m. April 13, 4 p.m. April 14

>> * “Tribute to Broadway”: 7:30 p.m. April 19

>> “Glass and a Fifth”: 7:30 p.m. April 20, 4 p.m. April 21

>> “Beethoven & Ravel”: 7:30 p.m. June 1, 4 p.m. June 2

Hawaii Opera Theatre

All performances at Blaisdell Concert Hall; $34-$135, Hawaiiopera.org, 596-7858 or 800-836-7372.

>> “Romeo and Juliet”: 7:30 p.m. Oct 12; 4 p.m., Oct. 14; 7:30 p.m. Oct 16

>> “La Traviata”: 7:30 p.m. May 17; 4 p.m. May 19; 7:30 p.m. May 21

Chamber Music Hawaii

$30, chambermusichawaii.org or 489-5038.

>> “The Fabulous French”: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 15, Doris Duke Theatre; 7 p.m. Oct. 17, University of Hawaii-West Oahu Library; 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22, Paliku Theatre

>> “War & Peace”: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 5, Paliku Theatre; 7:30 p.m. Nov. 19, Doris Duke Theatre; 7 p.m. Nov. 26, UH-West Oahu Library

>> “Annual Holiday Brass Choir Concert”: 7 p.m. Dec. 3, Central Union Church

>> “Honolulu Brass Quintet Holiday Concert”: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 10, Paliku Theatre

>> “Merry & Bright”: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17, Doris Duke Theatre

>> “L’Histoire du Soldat”: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 14, Doris Duke Theatre; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 18, Paliku Theatre; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 19, Paliku Theatre

>> “Galliard Plus One”: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 18, Doris Duke Theatre; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25, Paliku Theatre

>> “Trios, Trios, Trios!”: 7:30 p.m. March 18, Paliku Theatre; 7:30 p.m. March 25, Doris Duke Theatre

>> “Brass in Song, Madrigals and Hymns”: 7 p.m. April 8, UH-West Oahu Library; 7:30 p.m. April 15, Doris Duke Theatre; 7:30 p.m. April 22, Paliku Theatre

>> Hawaiian Oboe Legacy Project: 7:30 p.m. May 6, Paliku Theatre; 7:30 p.m. May 20, Doris Duke Theatre

Honolulu Chamber Music Series

All performances at Orvis Auditorium; $20-$45, honoluluchambermusicseries.org.

>> Iggy Jang Tango Extravaganza: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 3

>> Prazak & Zemlinsky Quartets: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 8

>> Cortona Trio: 7:30 p.m. March 23

>> Matthias Goerne & Alexander Schmalcz: 7:30 p.m. May 31