Maestro Nir Kabaretti has put together an unusually eclectic program for the first pair of Santa Barbara Symphony concerts this new year — at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 16, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17, both in the Granada Theatre (1214 State Street) — playing music from the 16th, 18th, 20th and 21st centuries.
He has, moreover, taken on the ever-popular challenge of introducing a new work of art music to the world. He is doing what every music director who has confidence in the future of music ought to do.
If the phrase were not too often used ironically these days, as a kind of reproof, I would say, God bless him!
Guest artists for these concerts will be Francesca Dego, violin, and Robert deMaine, cello.
Under Kabaretti’s baton, the Symphony will play Giovanni Gabrieli‘s Sacrae symphoniae (1597, 1615); George Frederick Handel‘s Water Music Suite (1717); the world premiere of Cristian Carrara‘s Machpelah: Dialog for Violin, Cello and Orchestra (2016); and Béla Bartók‘s Concerto for Orchestra (1943).
The Gabrieli is a fascinating choice. As the 16th century turned into the 17th, Europe and the British Isles witnessed the emergence of a number of remarkable composers whose reputations — and music, of course — spread far beyond the borders of their native countries.
To cite only those which spring immediately to mind, from what is now the U.K., there were John Dowland and William Byrd; from the patchwork quilt of German states, Heinrich Schütz and Michael Praetorius; and from Italy — that is to say, Venice — Claudio Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli.
“Gabrieli!” exclaimed Schütz, whose own majestic Symphoniae sacrae rival those of his Italian master, “Immortal gods, how great a man! If loquacious antiquity had seen him, let me say it in a word, it would have set him above Amphions, or if the Muses loved wedlock, Melpomene would have rejoiced in no other spouse…”
(A bit recherché, even for me, but you get the drift. Melpomene was the Muse of singing, later the Muse of Tragedy; I imagine her earlier job was the one Schütz meant. It’s not clear which Amphions he means — Greek mythology contains several — but Schütz clearly intends it to Gabrieli’s credit to be set above him.)
The Italians invented classical music as we know it today, and Venice’s contribution to the development of that music has been incalculable.
Gabrieli, Tomaso Albinoni, Baldassare Galuppi, Benedetto Marcello, Claudio Monteverdi, Giuseppe Tartini and Antonio Vivaldi — where would we be without them?
There was something happening in the Republic, an intellectual and artistic freedom that wasn’t happening anywhere else in Europe — except, perhaps, Holland, whose church, being Calvinist, didn’t support composers the way the Catholic churches did. (Calvin himself loved music, but didn’t think it belonged in church).
Venice frequently quarreled with Rome, and while Gabrieli was at Saint Mark’s, the Pope placed the city under interdiction, to no avail. The only practical result of the dispute was that the Doge threw out the Jesuits, who didn’t get back until 1656. If only Gallileo had accepted that job offer!
Handel’s Water Music, composed for a specific royal boating party, has lived nearly 300 years past the occasion and shows no sign of going away any time soon.
According to his website, Carrara is considered one of the most original composers of his generation, primarily writing symphonic and chamber music and working on musical theater and television scores on the side.
Critic Elena Formica has praised his work, comparing it to another artform.
“His music is close to the heart, it is clear but not simple, is straightforward but speak a language full of mystery: that of poetry,” she writes.
Regarding the title of Carrara’s newest piece, we learn in the Jewish Virtual Library that “The Cave of Machpelah is the world’s most ancient Jewish site and the second holiest place for the Jewish people, after Temple Mount in Jerusalem.”
According to the library, Abraham purchased the cave 3700 years ago, and he, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah were later buried at the site. In other words, Machpelah houses the remains of the patriarchs and matriarchs (with the exception of Rachel) of the Jewish people.
Carrara’s music, what I have heard of it, reminds me of Alexander Scriabin and Ottorino Respighi — that is, clearly modern, just as clearly lyrical and tonal, and programmatic rather than absolute.
Finally, there is Béla Bartók. Ezra Pound once wrote: “I’ll make a pact with you, Walt Whitman / I have detested you long enough.” My own antipathy to Bartók is of comparable duration.
I started out loving his music, because the first piece of his I ever heard (and the first classical LP I bought with my own money) was the Concerto for Orchestra performed by Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (that being the band that played the premiere; just twenty years before, more than half the musicians on the recording had participated in the first performance).
I still have the record. I just played it, and I still love it.
It wasn’t until afterwards, when I sought out other pieces by this strange man, that I had a rude awakening.
There is now no other composer whose works are so sharply divided between those I can’t live without — the Concerto for Orchestra, The Wooden Prince, The Miraculous Mandarin and the Violin Concerto No. 1 — and those that make me physically ill — most of the rest.
Bartók was the foremost practitioner of what Constant Lambert called the “wrong note school” of composition, and the composer kept on writing the stuff despite endless rebuffs by the public.
Only when he was dying did he write his romantic masterpiece, the Concerto for Orchestra, which the public immediately embraced and has been loved ever since. What a waste!
Tickets for the Santa Barbara Symphony’s upcoming concerts range from $28-$133, with special rates for seniors, students and groups.
Discounted student tickets are available for $10 with valid student I.D.
Single tickets can be purchased from the Granada Box Office at 805.899.2222 or online www.granadasb.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.