History is always humming and deepening within the special cultural machinery of CAMA. Aside from the inherently impressive legacy of Santa Barbara’s Community Arts Music Association's 105-year-run — making it the oldest classical presenting organization on the West Coast — we are often reminded of the numbers game during concert introductions.
And so it went at the Granada Theater last week, when CAMA Board Chair Deborah Bertling informed the audience that the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was making its 14th appearance locally that night, a frequency only exceeded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with its 100-plus concert track record here.
One of the handful of great orchestras based in London, the RPO, as such, is actually only half the age of CAMA. It's latest local concert perhaps predictably bedazzled, as current music director Vasily Petrenko led the dynamic ensemble through the venerable stuff of Debussy’s color blast of a concert-opener, “Danse,” Prokofiev's enthralling piano concerto No. 3 and an old symphonic plushie, Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2. Suffice to say, the program was itself steeped in history, repertoire-wise.
