The Santa Barbara Symphony opens its 2018-19 season (the 65th) with two weekend concerts at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 20, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 21, both in the Granada Theater.
The orchestra’s music director, Maestro Nir Kabaretti, will conduct, and the coast-to-coast sensation, pianist Jeffrey Biegel, will serve as guest soloist in the concerted work.
The concert begins with Ernő von Dohnányi‘s tuneful “American Rhapsody, for orchestra, Opus 47 (1953);” then swings into George Gershwin‘s landmark “Rhapsody in Blue for Piano and Orchestra (1924)” (with Mr. Biegel); and concludes with Hector Berlioz‘s gorgeous and unsettling “Symphonie fantastique, Épisode de la vie d’un artiste en cinq parties, Opus 14 (1830).”
The Dohnányi is a slender piece, almost a sketch, which makes pleasant and ingenious use of several genuine American tunes, most notably “Wayfaring Stranger”
“I am a poor, wayfaring stranger,
Traveling through this world of woe,
But there’s no sickness, toil, or danger,
In that bright land to which I go …”
The context and imagery being Christian, of course, but any European artist or intellectual kept on the run throughout the twentieth century must resonate with its sentiments, and the United States, which provided a haven for so many of them, must have seemed a “bright land,” indeed.
Gershwin, who longed to compose for the concert hall, suffered from that insecurity so many American artists have felt when they come up against European self-assurance, the certainty that all non-European composers are amateurs and lightweights.
When he met a great composer, he would beg for instruction. Ravel succumbed, and the result was, Gershwin remained Gershwin, but the Frenchman started sounding downright jazzy.
When he and Schoenberg were regularly playing tennis during the 1930s, the American tried to talk the Austrian into giving him composition lessons. Schoenberg knew better.
“That would just make you into bad Schoenberg,” he said, “whereas you are such a very good George Gershwin.” And so he was, and a unique original. “Rhapsody in Blue” served notice to the world that America had found its voice.
The most substantial piece on this program is, by far, the Berlioz. That is to say too much, and too little.
Though the subject matter is, as the composer makes plain. a drug overdose and its attendant hallucinations, it would be a grave mistake to assume that the symphony is merely autobiography.
The music is too meticulously constructed, too completely thought out, to be the work of an altered state.
Like his contemporary, Edgar Allen Poe, Berlioz grasped perfectly the essentials of intoxication, without having to take drugs himself.
What sets him apart from, and above, someone like Wagner, is his delicacy, his sense of humor, and his infallible sense of entertainment.
The angels of generosity underwriting these concerts are: Robert C. Dohmen, principal sponsor; Richard and Marilyn Mazess, concert sponsors; Patricia Gregory for the Baker Foundation, selection sponsor; Mary Tonetti Dorra and
Nancy Golden, co-selection sponsors; Mission Audio, corporate sponsor; and Marilynn L. Sullivan and Lois Duncan, champagne sponsors.
Single tickets to this concert start at $29. Tickets can be purchased from the Granada box office, 1214 State St,, by phone at 805-899-2222, or on line from 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.