The Santa Barbara Youth Symphony, flourishing under the sponsorship of the Santa Barbara Symphony’s Music Education Center, will offer us a free concert at 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 21, 2016, in the Lobero Theatre (33 East Canon Perdido).

Music Director Andy Radford will conduct; flautists Eliana and Elizabeth van Renterghem will serve as soloists.

The program will consist of selections from Albert Franz Doppler’s Concerto in d-minor for Two Flutes (with the van Renterghem sisters); the two Suites derived from Georges Bizet’s incidental music to Alphonse Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne/The Girl from Arles (1872); Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C-minor, Op. 67 (1804-1808); and the “Procession of the Nobles” from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Mlada (1872, 1889-90).

This is an extremely likable program — it well behooves young musicians with orchestral ambitions to be comfortable playing music that an audience actually wants to hear — without the least condescension (i.e., no Star Wars, no Beatles medleys).

Likable does not equal easy-to-play, of course; often quite the opposite is true. The Beethoven, the Bizet, and the Rimsky-Korsakov will each present a different kind of challenge to the players.

It’s all music that can get you so involved that you forget where you are and what you are doing — and if where you are is in an orchestra and what you are doing is playing an instrument, this can have embarrassing results — as Toscanini said, rather unkindly, of Bruno Walter: “When he comes to a pretty part, he just melts.”

(No one ever accused Toscanini of melting, more like bursting into flames.)

The Rimsky-Korsakov will no doubt give the young brass players a workout.

— 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.