Gerald Carpenter: Santa Barbara Symphony to String Us Along
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By Gerald Carpenter, Noozhawk Contributor
Violinists Caroline Campbell and Serena McKinney team up for 'Double Treble' at 3 p.m. Sunday
The Santa Barbara Symphony calls its next brace of concerts — at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at The Granada — “Double Treble.” The title is both a play on the catchphrase “double trouble” and a reference to the featured violinists.
The musicians are not just violinists, of course, but the concertmaster and assistant concertmaster of the symphony: Caroline Campbell and Serena McKinney. They are scheduled to start the evening/afternoon as soloists in the Concerto in D-Minor for Two Violins and Orchestra, BWV 1043 of Johann Sebastian Bach.
The string section being in the ascendant, at least for the first half of the concert, the symphony will go on to play Sir Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Opus 47. After the intermission we will hear arguably the greatest, and certainly among the most transformational, symphonies ever composed: the Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, Opus 55 “Eroica” by Ludwig Beethoven.
With one exception, whenever I hear a piece of Bach’s music described as “romantic,” I think somebody is trying to sell me something. A greater composer than Bach never lived, but romantic he was not. The one exception is the second movement of the D-Minor Concerto.
So far from being romantic, Bach’s music is never even sentimental, yet this movement is both — not to say wistful, nostalgic, exquisite, pensive, anything you like. There is nothing quite like it, and once you have heard it, you never forget it.
As usual with his orchestral scores, Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro manages to be voluptuous and diffident at the same time. It is a lovely work, with a fair amount of fancy contrapuntal writing in the second half.
Beethoven was originally going to name his third symphony after Napoleon — until the man proclaimed himself emperor. With his hyper-humanity, the composer embodies our ambivalence toward the Little Corporal.
Beethoven loathed war, yet was drawn, like all of us, toward glory. Bonaparte crowning himself — literally snatching the crown from the cleric’s hands and putting it on his own head — provoked a severe crisis in Beethoven’s emotional life (already precarious since he was aware that he was going deaf). He tore up the title page of the symphony, and he might have destroyed the whole score if his friends hadn’t intervened. I’m sure glad he didn’t.
Tickets to these concerts are available from the Granada box office, at 1214 State St., or 805.899.2222, or click here to purchase them online.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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