The Santa Barbara Symphony, with Nir Kabaretti on the podium and young violinist Augustin Hadelich as guest, started its season with passion over the weekend at The Granada.

The major works on the program were Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219 (‘Turkish’),” with the gifted Hadelich as soloist, and a rousing performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64.”

Mozart was by all accounts a splendid violinist himself, and wrote an entire repertoire for the instrument during his all too brief time on Earth. There is some confusion about the date of the fifth violin concerto; manuscripts have been found dated 1775 and 1780, but clearly the eternally young composer had this work sounding in his psyche for quite some time.

There was a poetic aspect to hearing Hadelich, who was born in 1984, playing this work. The soloist is young, but rightly confident and extremely skilled. He also played joyfully, adding to Mozart’s own buoyancy. The audience gave him a richly deserved reception, whereupon he encored with one of Nicolo Paganini’s violin caprices.

Hadlich is also a good sport and cares about music off the stage. After arriving in Santa Barbara, he visited Franklin School, and played for the students. After giving the children a taste of fine music, Hadelich said, “When I look around, there are always kids who are more interested than others in the music. But if one child comes away with an interest to look into music further, it’s all totally worth it.”

The program closed with Tchaikovsky’s mighty fifth symphony, with its repetition of the rapturous theme in all four movements. The composer conducted the first performance in St. Petersburg in 1888 and immediately deemed it “a failure,” part of his lifelong misreading of his own genius.

Its motif is “providence” and its repetition is probably most poignant in the second movement, andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza. This is perhaps the most well-known and well-loved of the symphony’s movements.

The work highlighted the orchestra’s splendid horns, as well as the superb strings. As Kabaretti has become more at ease in his Santa Barbara concerts, his sheer enjoyment of conducting has become more and more apparent. This, of course, translates for the audience into occasions of great excitement. The audience was generous in its applause at the concert’s end and people streamed onto State Street in the late afternoon sunshine, beaming with pleasure.

The Sunday matinee began with William Schuman’s “American Festival Overture,” one of those “modern” symphonic works so beloved in the 1930s. Orchestra programmers make an effort to bring lesser-known works to the attention of audiences, which can only advance the cause of classical music. In a future concert, something from an earlier time might make for a nice change, perhaps something by Henry Purcell or Georg Telemann.

— Margo Kline covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor.