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Latin Spin Spices Up Finale of International Guitar Festival
The Santa Barbara Symphony was joined by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet this past weekend in a rich and wide-ranging, Latin-spiced program at The Granada. The performances were the capstone of the symphony’s 2nd Annual International Guitar Festival.
Conducted by Bulgarian guest-maestro Rossen Milanov, the orchestra played a diverse concert of works by Georges Bizet, Sergio Assad, Maurice Ravel and Alberto Ginastera. The centerpiece was the guitar concerto “Interchange,” commissioned by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet from the Brazilian-born Assad.
The guitar concerto is in five movements, named “For Bill” (William Kanengiser), “For Scott” (Scott Tennant), “For Matt” (Matthew Greif), “For John” (John Dearman), and “For the L.A.G.Q.” These musicians are undisputed masters of the classical guitar, who also venture as far afield as collaborating with The Who, Pink Floyd and Dire Straits. They clearly relished the complexities of Assad’s contemporary work.
More to this reviewer’s liking was their encore, “Ritual Dance of Fire” by Manuel de Falla. All the rhythmic and tonal beauties of this Spanish masterpiece were explored, illustrating the quartet’s showmanship as well as its musicianship.
The Saturday evening performance began with the “L’Arlesienne Suite” by Bizet. The composer had already enjoyed considerable success, although Carmen was still to come, when the 33-year-old Bizet was commissioned to write the incidental music for a play by Alphonse Daudet. His score is an aural portrait of Provence, beginning with an aria-like motif in the horns, then building throughout the various sections of the orchestra. The symphony, true its recent performances, sounded splendid.
The program notes described Daudet’s response to his drama’s less than happy reception from audiences. It was, he wrote, “a most dazzling failure with the most charming music in the world.” Fortunately, Bizet knew a good thing when he had created it, rescued the incidental music and re-cast it as this dramatic suite.
The second half of the program consisted of Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite” and the “Variationes Concertantes, Op. 23,” by Argentine composer Ginastera. Less grand than the first selections, these pieces brought out the lighter, more playful side of the orchestra.
Ravel created the “Mother Goose Suite” from small piano studies he wrote for the young children of the Godebski family. The very Impressionistic work consists of sections for “Sleeping Beauty,” “Hop o’ My Thumb,” “The Empress of the Pagoda,” “Beauty and the Beast” and his own narrative, “The Fairy Garden.” Every family should have a friend of such genius.
Ginastera, who died in 1983, was a contemporary of Hector Villa-Lobos, and the two between them put Latin American music squarely on the serious music map. Their output is not based on indigenous music, but rather gives voice to Latin America in the classical medium.
There are 12 variations in the Ginastera work, and the composer explained his intentions thus: “These variations have a subjective Argentine character. Instead of using folkloristic material, I try to achieve an Argentine atmosphere through the employment of my own thematic and rhythmic elements.”
Early in the work, there was a plaintive duet with principal cellist Geoffrey Rutkowski and harpist Michelle Temple, arrestingly lyrical. Near the end of the piece, Rutkowski and Temple were joined by one of the string basses, in another haunting refrain. It’s a testament to the orchestra’s depth and versatility that such little gems are brought to audiences fortunate enough to attend these performances.
— Margo Kline covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor.
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