The final performance of the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra’s “Chamber Players” ensemble will take place at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Fleischmann Auditorium of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, 2559 Puesta del Sol Road.
The first half of this exemplary program will consist of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “String Quintet in C-Major, Opus 29,” with Amy Hershberger and Elizabeth Hedman, violins; Valerie Malvinni and Heiichiro Ohyama, violas; and Paula Fehrenbach, cello. The second half will present Johannes Brahms’ “Sextet for Strings in B-flat Major, Opus 18,” with Hedman and Hershberger, violins; Ohyama and Michael Lieberman, violas; and Fehrenbach and Cathy Biagini, cello.
Ohyama is one of the world’s great masters of the viola. No chance to hear him play — even when, as here, he has put himself in support rather than the lead — should be missed by a music lover.
The Brahms Sextet, written when the composer was 27, is a justly established fixture of string chamber programs. It is, quite simply, sublime. It is somewhat top-heavy with respect to its melodic and emotional grandeur, the last two movements serving as a kind of decompression chamber after the devastating lyricism of the first two. The Beethoven Quintet is less well-known than it deserves to be — a sparkling, soaring masterpiece and his only full-scale original composition in the form (the other “string quintets,” Opus 4 and Opus 104, are arrangements of works written for other combinations, respectively, a wind octet and a piano trio).
Tickets are available through the SBCO office, by calling 805.966.2441 or at the door. Click here for more information.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com.