For its next concert, the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra will subdive into three distinct chamber ensembles to play works by Russian, French and Belgian composers.
The concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Fleischmann Auditorium of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
We will hear the virtuoso collaborators of the Chamber Orchestra play Sergei Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes for Clarinet, String Quartet, and Piano, Opus 34 (1920), François Poulenc’s Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet, FP 100 (1939) and César Franck’s Quintet in F-Minor for Piano and Strings, M. 7 (1879) (the “M.” refers to the catalogue number of Franck’s works assigned by Wilhelm Mohr).
The Chamber Orchestra calls this program “Chamber Music Celebrating Valentine’s Day,” which may lead some audience members to think they will hear some lushly romantic music reminiscent of chocolate hearts, flowers, hand-holding and moonlight. I don’t think irony was intended, but only a rather eccentric couple would choose the first two of these three works as a backdrop for romance. Prokofiev had his lush, romantic moments, of course, but not many of them came in his late 20s, while he was deep in neo-classicism and concertizing as a pianist.
The Overture is a delightful work, however, and very listener-friendly: jaunty, sly and good-humored. Poulenc was no kind of romantic at all, and one of the foundation principles of his colleagues in Les Six was a rejection of the heavy romantic Wagnerism that held so much of Europe in thrall in the beginning of the 20th century.
The Sextet is pure Poulenc, witty, wistful, vaguely and pleasantly tuneful. The Franck can reasonably called Romantic, at least in the harmonies and Chopin-like melodies. Franck was no intellectual, even if his music often makes him sound like one. The work is dedicated to Camille Saint-Saëns, who played the premiere.
Tickets to this concert are $64 for general admission, and they are available at the door, by phone from the Lobero box office at 805.963.0761 or online by clicking here.
— 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.