The Santa Barbara Symphony will close its 2018-19 season with a trilogy of romantic works that includes an overture, a song cycle, and a symphony.
Maestro Nir Kabaretti, who has just confirmed a three-year extension of his contract with the symphony, will conduct the program twice this weekend: 8 p.m. Saturday, May 11, and 3 p.m. Sunday, May 12, both in the Granada Theater.
Opening the concerts will be Peter Tchaikovsky‘s “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture after Shakespeare” (1870, 1880), followed by Elmer Bernstein‘s “Songs of Love and Loathing” (1989) with mezzo-soprano Leann Sandel-Pantaleo.
After the intermission, the concerts will conclude with Antonín Dvořák‘s “Symphony No. 8 in G-Major, Opus 88” (1889).
Of the many great and memorable works of music inspired by Shakespeare‘s tale of the doomed lovers, Juliet and her Romeo, Tchaikovsky’s is the shortest and most directly appealing — and, hence, the most frequently performed.
He gives us just enough of the gorgeous main theme so we remember it forever, but not so much as numb us with familiarity. Tchaikovsky was a great reader, and works of literature inspired many of his best scores, in particular this Romeo and Juliet and the grand symphony based on Lord Byron‘s verse drama-cum-romantic manifesto, Manfred.
The Bernstein songs, which sound more convincingly of love than of loathing, were premiered by the Santa Barbara Symphony in 1989. Varujan Kojian conducted, and Elizabeth Mannion was the soloist.
Depending on when you think the Old Testament was written, the texts are drawn from almost 30 centuries. I always have trouble getting the words in art songs, no matter how great.
That goes for Schubert and Mahler, and it certainly goes for Bernstein.
When I spoke with him before the premiere, the composer told me he was always coming up with melodies he liked, but which didn’t have anything to do with whatever movie he was working on.
So he would write them down and let them simmer in his desk until he figured out what to do with them.
That was basically the origins of “Songs of Love and Loathing.” Virgil Thomson once wrote about how pretty “dead music” was, and that “new music is never pretty like that.”
On that basis, I have retuned to these Bernstein songs periodically over the years since their premiere. Each time they seemed more beautiful.
Dvořák’s nine symphonies are all cut from the same fabric, all shaped by the same master melodist. As Americans, we tend to grant the “From the New World” a privileged spot, but it is only different in his folk source material, not in quality or beauty. The Eighth is full of great tunes and barrels along irresistably.
Single tickets to these concerts are $29-$135. They can be purchased from the Granada box office, 1214 State St., by phone at 805-899-2222, or online at www.granadasb.org.
For more about the Santa Barbara Symphony and how to support the organization and its programming, visit www.thesymphony.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.