Review | A Tale of Two Russians, Plus One

Thematic programming being an in-house tactic at the Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS), its season kickoff concert last weekend at the Granada abided by the theme of things Russian — with major works by Rachmaninoff, featuring the dazzling pianist Michelle Cann and Shostakovich. But the season and this concert commenced, as is the orchestra’s wont, with an American baseball tradition, the “Star Spangled Banner.” Granted, it came wrapped in a Russian garment, delicately twisted arrangement by great Russian-in-Paris-and–Los Angeles composer Igor Stravinsky, with a small twist of chordal shifts and re-routed rhythmic configurations.

That short patriotic gesture of an appetizer amounted to the first step of maestro Nir Kabaretti’s 20th anniversary season, as head of the SBS. In the body of the concert, the Russian parade continued, in two different directions: opening with the crowd-pleasing warhorse of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto was a wise decision, while launching into the complex, full-plate splendor of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 was a wise choice, artistically. In short, it was a two-front symphonic affair, beautifully acquitted by the ensemble and guest soloist. 

Some classical music staples have the distinction of having reflexively associative links to cinema, however unfair the connections. Is it possible to hear Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra“ without thinking of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey? Film nerds may have trouble hearing the adagio movement of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony without cross-referencing Visconti’s Death in Venice. And on some level, it can be hard to hear Rachmaninoff’s second concerto — nicknamed “Rach 2” — without memory-checking the Australian film Shine, in which the pianist protagonist gamely rises and shines to the challenge of playing the score.

At the Granada, Cann handily rose to said challenge, technically and interpretively. She is a superb pianist, who brought the right degrees of clarity, muscularity and personal expressivity to a fairly challenging score. In this musical happy place, bathos meets keyboard gymnastics over its three-movements, Cann brought proper command to each quality. 

The adagio possesses a by-now mythic and comforting familiarity. Its contours and colors occupy a happy place — if also a sentimentality-soaked one — in the collective psyche. The Allegro brings along sweeping pianistic flourishes, leading into a romantic melodic theme, a late-arriving earworm-y kernel of the score. Capping off with Cann’s feverish flight to the end, she abruptly stood up, as if propelled, ejector seat-style, by the concentric force of the notes.

A splashy showpiece of a solo piano encore included a smattering of jazz-infused swing, hinting at another dimension of her musical being. Maybe we’ll learn more on repeat visits. 

After intermission, Kabaretti took a moment to cast a spotlight on young students in the orchestra’s ranks, a reflection of the Symphony’s commitment to education and outreach to young musicians and future classical lovers in the community. 

Shostakovich occupies a unique place in the pantheon of 20th-century composers. He embodies dual strains of extending Russian music tradition while carving out a fresh path, a modernist language both expressionistic and palatable to traditionalist tastes. 

His Fifth Symphony is a fine example of that balancing act, which opens sternly and in the tense thicket of the opening movement, but branches out into the folk-like motifs and impishly mischievous textures and tonal wanderings in the second. From the murmuring musings and emotive wrenching of the Adagio, the final movement, with its big, blaring brass and percussion passage, wends its way to a relatively triumphant air. At one bright juncture, gentle harp notes — by Michelle Temple — bring a lightness of being into play, if briefly, before strings almost neurotically hammer on a high fifth interval in the score’s potent and delightfully strange end game.

Kabaretti and his charges made persuasive sense and conjured dramatic flair with its reading. And we’re off, into season number 74.

As a post-concert postscript, the show continued, and was prefaced by musical action next door to the Granada, in the buzzed-about new jazz club The Grand on State. An early set found Kabaretti’s gifted jazz guitarist son Adam, a junior at San Marcos High School, showing his mainstream jazz wares with classmate pianist Julian Dempsey. After the Symphony concert, piano soloist Cann was perched at a table watching her husband, trumpeter Dorin Mahar sitting in with the Grand Band, impressing with his tasteful chops on “Bye Bye Blackbird.”

Serious music was abuzz, in different stylistic directions, on this block of State on an autumn Saturday night.