The Community Arts-Music Association (CAMA), which formed initially for the purpose of bringing the Los Angeles Philharmonic to Santa Barbara for a concert, will open its centennial season with a concert by that very same orchestra, at 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 28, in the Granada Theatre.
Conducted by Paolo Bortolameolli, the concert will also feature the brilliant piano virtuosity of Jean-Yves Thibaudet, in the concerted work.
There are two works on the program: Camille Saint-Saëns‘s “Piano Concerto No. 5 in F-Major, Opus 103, “Egyptian” (1896)” (with M. Thibaudet); and Ludwig Beethoven‘s “Symphony #5 in c-minor, Opus 67 (1807).”
In childhood, I was introduced to the “Carnival of the Animals,” and I liked it a lot, but my real appreciation — let’s call it love —for the music of Saint-Saëns began when my older brother brought home Sviatislav Richter‘s recording of the “Egyptian” Concerto, and began to play it in the evenings while he studied. (Actually, he bought the record for the Rachmaninov First Concerto on the other side, but that proved a dull disappointment, so he gave the flip side a shot.)
From the very first bell-like chords, we were both under the spell. I had never heard prettier music, and, 50 years later, I still haven’t. Nor have I heard a single passage that bored me in any of his works, or which seemed ill- or carelessly-made.
Like all creators who are sure of themselves, he never went out of his way to be ingratiating, and never attempted to conceal or sugar-coat his opinions.
“Nowadays,” he once wrote to a friend, “I only come to Paris to speak ill of Debussy.”
After playing the first performance of Franck‘s “Piano Quintet,” when the childishly grateful composer handed him the score with the hand-written dedication to him on the title page, he glanced at it, tossed it onto the piano, and left it behind when he went home.
He was very attached to North Africa, and spent many of his winters in Egypt. His collections of regional folk tunes bore fruit in several of his compositions, most notably in the piano and orchestra fantasy “Africa,” composed in Cairo in 1891, and spectacularly in the “Egyptian” Concerto, written five years later in the temple city of Luxor.
You could even say his love of North Africa was his undoing. In 1921, in his 86th year, he took an airplane to Algiers, caught a chill, and died of a heart attack a few days later.
Single tickets to this concert are $39-$119; they can be bought in person at the Granada box office, 1214 State St.; by phone at 805-899-2222; or online at https://ticketing.granadasb.org/single/SYOS.aspx?p=11458.
— 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.