Symphony Season Coming to a Close

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By Gerald Carpenter, Noozhawk Contributor

This weekend's concerts will feature the sounds of Tchaikovsky and Brahms, with pianist Sergio Tiempo as a guest soloist.

The Santa Barbara Symphony’s “Great Granada Finale” — a misleading title, since it is the 2008-09 season that is ending, not the symphony’s tenure in the Granada — will take place in the Granada Theatre at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.

Maestro Nir Kabaretti will conduct, with guest artist Sergio Tiempo as piano soloist.

The program will consist of two works: Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 23 and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Opus 98. Those who saw Ken Russell’s 1970 film The Music Lovers will remember the scene in which young Peter Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain), minutes after the triumphant premiere of his first piano concerto, enters a salon to find his mentor.

Nicholas Rubinstein (Max Adrian) laying in wait for him at the piano. As Tchaikovsky comes in, Rubinstein begins pounding out the opening chords, brutally, satirically. He thinks the concerto is garbage, and he tells the composer so to his face, with the tumultuous applause still ringing in his ears.

Rubinstein’s verdict has been echoed by practically every musicologist and musical academic in Western civilization, from that day to this — yet, nobody remembers who they were, and everybody remembers this concerto (we remember Rubinstein mainly because of his championing of Tchaikovsky’s music, except for the concerto, and because he founded and led the Moscow Conservatory, and because his big brother, Anton, was a great composer, not to mention, in the words of Grove’s Dictionary, “one of the greatest pianists the world has ever seen”).

Familiarity often does breed contempt, and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is one of the most familiar works of classical music. Nevertheless, it is a highly enjoyable work, great fun to watch if the soloist has flair, and the second movement is exquisite.

The original program for this concert paired the Tchaikovsky concerto with Béla Bártok’s death-bed masterpiece, the Concerto for Orchestra (with The Wooden Prince and the Violin Concerto No. 1, one of the few works of this master that I unequivocally love).

This leads one to suppose that the intention was to have the last work heard in the season be a showcase for the brilliant musicians who play in this wonderful orchestra. If so, they could not have made a happier substitution than the Brahms Fourth Symphony. There is no better opportunity for demonstrating what a great orchestra sounds like at the top of its form. Brahms’s lyrical gifts were unmatched, but he seldom gave them free reign in his symphonies, except in this last one. If ever a musical composition justified the epithet “sublime,” this is it.

Tickets to the concerts are $29 to $65, or $100 to $125 for premium seats. For tickets, click here, call 805.899.2222 or visit the Granada box office at 1214 State St.

— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor.

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