The next in the Santa Barbara Music Club’s stellar series of free concerts takes place at 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23, in the First United Methodist Church, 305 E. Anapamu St.
The featured musicians include violinist Han Kim, cellist Sang Yhee, pianist Constantine Finehouse, and clarinetist Joanne Kim, performing Franz Schubert‘s “Fantasy in C-Major for Violin and Piano, D. 934” (1827); Robert Schumann’s “Three Romances for Clarinet and Piano, Opus 94” (1849); Ludwig Beethoven’s “Sonata No. 4 in C-Major for Cello and Piano, Opus 102” (1815); and the first movement of Felix Mendelssohn‘s “Piano Trio No. 1 in d-minor, Opus 49” (1839).
The emotional engine of Peter Shaffer‘s play “Amadeus” (1979) is Salieri’s soul-devouring envy of Mozart. Since the play — and the movie made from it — represent, by far, the most popular dramatization of a composer’s life ever produced, the public can be forgiven for assuming that this kind of back-biting and spiteful competitiveness is typical of musical society in any age.
In my experience, however, and from my reading, I have found the exact opposite to be the case. Writers and painters may sometimes conform to this dispiriting stereotype, but composers almost never.
Haydn‘s statement to Mozart‘s father — “I tell you before God, and as an honest man, your son is the greatest composer known to me by person and repute; he has taste and what is more the greatest skill in composition” — is a good example of what I’m talking about.
All of the composers on this program were generous with, and supportive of, their contemporaries, major and minor. Robert Schumann (1810-56) was almost as important a champion of contemporary music as he was a composer of it. He was a widely read and effective musical journalist, giving many struggling musicians their first major attention.
His decisive influence on his protégé Brahms is well-known, but he was also the promoter of such very different composers as Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz.
Did I say this concert was free? It is.
For information on this or other Santa Barbara Music Club programs and performing artists, and to become a SBMC member, visit www.SBMusicClub.org.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.