As sure as fall falls, orchestral culture has reentered the local calendar, specifically in the city’s acknowledged orchestral home of The Granada Theatre — and through the aegis of different hosts. Last Saturday, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) graced the Granada stage, with violin soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja aboard, part of the UCSB Arts & Lectures season.
This coming weekend (Oct. 19-20), on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, the Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS) launches its concert season (coincidentally, spotlighting Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, also performed last weekend by the LPO). One night later, October 21, the international orchestra-presenting CAMA group kick-starts its own new concert season with a special Monday night orchestra night out, featuring the world-renowned Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
Santa Barbara Symphony’s 72nd season, led by long-standing maestro Nir Kabaretti, is built on the stuff of crowd-pleasing standard repertoire, between Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and the ever-popular Rodrigo Concerto de Aranjuez, with guitarist Pablo Sáinz-Villegas returning to do the guitar soloist honors. The program’s “Tchaikovsky Immersion” element also includes noted late local composer Emma Lou Diemer’s Homage to Tchaikovsky, commissioned by the Symphony in 2001. Diemer, who died at age 96 this year, was one of the most celebrated and prolific of Santa Barbara–based composers, also known as a masterful organist and composer of organ music.