Symphony’s Mid-month Mozart Marathon

The Santa Barbara Symphony launches into 2025 with yet another first for the increasingly adventurous 72-year-old ensemble: a pair of weekend performances January 18-19 where the program is entirely different on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. The prolific classical composer Mozart is the focus of affection for the weekend of wonder, which highlights four concertos featuring different instrumental soloists, plus two symphonies – No. 35 (“Haffner”) and No. 38 – and the Overture to The Impresario and the beloved “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.”

What’s more, all of the soloists for the two concerts are principal players with the Santa Barbara Symphony, an opportunity for the orchestra to both showcase and honor its own talented members, most of whom have extensive experience either recording for film and TV or touring and performing with other classical ensembles, or both. 

Music & Artistic Director Nir Kabaretti carefully curated the programs to highlight the prolific and prodigious nature of Mozart’s work with the piece intended to exhibit different facets of the composer’s brilliance.

“Mozart was an obvious choice,” Kabaretti explained. “He created so much music that still resonates today and he wrote a concerto for just about every instrument except cello, including the harp, which is rare. I had the luxury of picking pieces to fit our soloists, and to make programs that would be most attractive for our audience, since it’s the first time we’re doing something like this.”

Saturday night’s concert is bookended by the Overture and the “Haffner” symphony, with the “Concerto for Flute and Harp” (featuring Amy Tatum and Michelle Temple) and “Violin Concerto No. 4 in D” (with soloist Jessica Guideri, the ensemble’s concertmaster) as the tantalizingly meaty middle. On Sunday, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”leads to the “Oboe Concerto” (with soloist Lara Wickes) and “Piano Concerto No. 23 in A” (with Natasha Kislenko, whose other roles encompass UCSB and the Music Academy), with “Symphony No. 38 in D Major” closing out the weekend.

“The idea was to match the concertos with symphonic pieces to make the concerts a little bit rounder as we explore Mozart,” Kabaretti said. “It’s a real privilege for both us and the audience because you do need some time to get into the specific style of Mozart, which has a certain kind of bowing technique, its own phrasing and sonority, and often the perfect, almost fragile, balance between the different instruments. Usually we perform Mozart as just one piece of the program. This gives us the time to work more deeply into the same concept of music, really get into what makes Mozart who he was, the genius whose appeal is universal.”

Kabaretti is particularly proud to be presenting the duo harp and flute concerto as it offers a rare opportunity to hear the harp as a melodic instrument.

“You don’t normally have a chance to hear the harp play a tune rather than just flourishes up and down the instrument,” he said. “But you also get to hear more of the range of the other instruments such as the oboe, and how Mozart pushed to the extreme possibilities of what it can do.” 

After January’s program, the Santa Barbara Symphony will return to the usual pair of performances for February’s entry, this season’s concert with the orchestra playing in sync with a film screening. Guest conductor Lucas Richman will wield the baton for The Gold Rush, which features writer-director Charlie Chaplin’s own scorefor the silent classic, on February 15-16. The March 22-23 program, The Seven Deadly Sins, features singer Storm Large on the Weill-Brecht title work, plus pieces by Ibert, Still, and Jessie Montgomery, with guests The Hudson Shad Quartet. 

Brahms’ A German Requiem is the anchor for the April 26-27 concerts, with Mahler’s “Three Rückert-Lieder” as an appetizer. The season comes to a close May 17-18 with another new concept for the symphony as violin superstar Gil Shaham will perform three different concertos over the course of the weekend – Tchaikovsky’s on Saturday, and both Bach’s “Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor” and the West Coast premiere of Avner Dorman’s “Double Concerto,” with fellow violinist (and Shaham’s wife) Adele Anthony. Dvořák’s “Symphony No. 8” closes both performances. 

Visit https://thesymphony.org for details and tickets