Beat Me, Dmitri

by Gerald Carpenter

INSUPER NOVA: Paul
Galbraith, who plays a unique guitar — held like a cello and
containing two extra strings (one high, one low) — will perform at
7:30 p.m. tonight, Thursday, October 19, in the Mary Craig
Auditorium of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (1130 State St.).
Galbraith’s program will include Rameau’s Suite in A Major, Bach’s
Cello Suite No. 4, Mozart’s Sonata in F Major, the Tabulatura Nova
¨C Rhapsodic Variations on an Old Bohemian Love Song” by the Czech
composer Petr Eben, and Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite. For tickets or
other information, call the museum at 963-4364 or go to sbma.net.

Camerata Pacifica will perform this month’s program in Santa
Barbara at 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. Friday, October 20, in Lehmann Hall at
the Music Academy of the West. Adrian Spence (flute), Catherine
Leonard (violin), Donald McInnes (viola), Ani Aznavoorian (cello),
and Warren Jones (piano) will combine variously to perform Josef
Haydn’s Trio for Piano, Flute & Cello in G Major, Hob. XV, No.
15; Johannes Brahms’s Intermezzo in A Minor, Opus 118, No. 1;
Capriccio in C-sharp Minor, Opus 76, No. 5; Rhapsody in G Minor,
Opus 79, No. 2; and Sonata for Violin & Piano in G Major, Opus
78; Wolfgang Mozart’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in E Minor, K.
304, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Phantasy Quintet.

The Music Academy is located in Montecito at 1070 Fairway Road.
For tickets and other information, call (800) 557-2224 or 884-8410,
or visit cameratapacifica.org

The wild card in this deck is apparently the Vaughan Williams,
if that adjective can ever be applied to his mainly peaceful and
majestic music. To be sure, the Sea Symphony, the Eighth Symphony,
and the Tuba Concerto have their intemperate and/or eccentric
moments, but the Phantasy Quintet is standard VW, folk-based, and
absolutely gorgeous.

At 3 p.m. on Saturday, October 21, the Santa Barbara Music Club
will correct, if not a great wrong or injustice, at least a rather
significant omission: while Santa Barbara has fallen all over
itself celebrating Mozart’s 250th year, our musical organizations
have so far done little or nothing to observe the centenary of
Dmitri Shostakovich. We should be grateful to the Music Club for
this free Matinee Concert in the library’s Faulkner Gallery, titled
Shostakovich 100th Birthday Celebration. The all-Shostakovich
program will consist of his Trio No. 1 in C Minor, Opus 8, arranged
for violin, clarinet and piano by Emil Torick and performed by Trio
Brio (Torick, violin; Nancy Mathison, clarinet; and Donna
Massello-Chiacos, piano); Four Preludes for Piano, Opus 34, played
by Rosa LoGiudice; Six Romances with Lyrics by British Poets, Opus
62, sung by baritone Andre Shillo in his native Russian, with the
wonderful Betty Oberacker at the piano; and the great Sonata for
Cello and Piano in D Minor, Opus 40, a gift from the great Geoffrey
Rutkowski and Oberacker. The fact that we are still hearing lots of
his music a decade and a half after the demise of the Cold War
ought to put to rest the notion that Shostakovich’s compositions,
or anybody’s, must be heard in some kind of political context. For
more information, go to sbmusicclub.org.

And for those who simply can’t get through the week without an
all-Mozart concert, the Community Arts Music Association is
bringing the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra to the Arlington at 8 p.m.
on Wednesday, October 25. The Orpheus does without a conductor,
distributing leadership on a per-piece basis. Their guest soloist
will be the superb pianist, Emanuel Ax, who will perform with them
the Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 503 and the Piano Concerto in G
Major, K. 453. The band will open with the Overture to Così fan
tutte and close with the Symphony No. 35 in D Major, K. 385,
“Haffner.” For tickets and other CAMA information, call 966-4324;
for tickets and other Arlington events, call 963-4408. You can also
visit CAMA online at camasb.org.