This has been a notable and ambitious Requiem year for the Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS), to inspiring ends for the listening public. Following fairly close on the heels of last spring’s performance of Brahms’s glorious German Requiem, recent fare featured Mozart’s famed and even ever-popular example of the form (popular, for a requiem).
As part of the double-play Requiem servings, the two performances also functioned as significant showcases for the fledgling Santa Barbara Symphony Chorus, formed by maestro Nir Kabarreti — now in his 20th season at the podium. In both performances, the massed musical forces in the orchestral and packed choral real estate on stage amounted to a population of some 200 musicians. It was a sight, and sound, to behold.
Although Mozart’s masterwork, consuming the concert’s second half, was clearly the main attraction and marketing hook of the program, the opening pieces were hardly idle also-rans. In an impressively balanced plate of a program, the proceedings opened with two contemporary works — the 1992 vintage Musica celestis (Heavenly Music) by respected mid-career American composer Aaron Jay Kernis and the ink-still-at-least moist piece Memoria: Concerto for Two Trombones and Orchestra by Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi.
