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Read stage director Jonathan Fox’s bio

The Trouble with Marathons/Saturday, January 18, 2025

The Beauty and the Beast about marathons, particularly when they focus on a single composer, filmmaker, painter, architect, whatever . . . is curation. Curators, those tasked with selecting the content of an exhibition or performance series, can sometimes get a bit carried away, losing sight of the most important responsibility of the curatorial art; avoid at all costs, turning adventure and discovery into an awful bore.

Santa Barbara Symphony audiences are fortunate. The curator-in-chief of music programming for the orchestra, Music, and Artistic Director Nir Kabaretti is a master at conjuring fresh, beautifully imagined, and carefully crafted concert programs. Not the least flustered when tasked with creating two consecutive and separate all-Mozart programs for the orchestra’s January 18-19 concert pair in the Granada Theatre, Kabaretti chose to focus on the bright and playful side of Mozart’s complex personality, while also cleverly weaving a potent handful of narrative anecdotes into the fabric of the two concerts to gently separate the human being from the demigod.

Kabaretti’s programming architecture for the two Mozart concerts allowed for a satisfying and carefully calibrated flow from one piece to another, from Saturday evening to Sunday afternoon without a restless stir from auditors. Success was in balance, and aesthetic. The programs grazed Mozart’s copious oeuvre with scholarly magnanimity. An overture, a little night music, four concertos, and two symphonies were the ingredients for Kabaretti’s Mozartiana.

His spices? Forget savory. The tonalities filling the Granada Theatre for both concerts were in Mozart’s happiest key areas - C major, D major (lots of D major), and A major. Does curation, even of tonal centering matter? Of course! Two concerts over two days gave us a roomful of positive energy and, well, happiness. Did maestro Kabaretti think this magic up? Creativity and innovation are in his job description.

The concerto soloists for both concerts (more on each later) were the principal players of the SBSO. In southern California, with the Los Angeles megalopolis a little over an hour south, the SBSO principals also enjoy similar positions in the film and TV industry, and with many of the dozen or so professional orchestras, opera, and dance companies in the Greater Los Angeles area.

In other words, the Mozart Marathon concerto soloists were a collective treat to the ear; magnificent execution, authoritative styling, interesting cadenzas, and the confident virtuosity that comes with being at the top of one’s game.

It makes sense to open a Mozart Marathon with an overture. Without wink or nod but surely from intention, Kabaretti selected with straight face, the overture to Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario), a brief singspiel opera from 1786 commissioned for a private entertainment at the Vienna palace of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II about the vanity of Italian singers. There’s more to the fascinating story. Think Salieri, and Google Impresario.

The Santa Barbara Symphony, tastefully reduced in string numbers to abide period performance practice, gave the roughly five-minute overture it’s stylistic due on Saturday’s opening night of the Marathon - clean articulation, spunky playing, lovely balances between departments, and an irresistibly glib C major temperament. A light confection to open the Mozart festivities.

Kabaretti loves to collaborate with his colleagues at Santa Barbara’s other professional performing arts organizations. His relationship with stage director Jonathan Fox has been steady and productive over several years. Recently retired after 16 years as Artistic Director at Santa Barbara’s Ensemble Theatre Company, Fox has remained active as a freelance director for recent productions in Frankfurt and Cologne (Germany), Vienna (Austria), and Basel (Switzerland).

Having worked with conductor Kabaretti on several memorable concert/narrative collaborations pairing semi-staged dialogue to musical themes, Fox was a no brainer to join the Mozart Marathon creative team. Adding de-mystifying anecdotes about the composer as punctuation points to the extraordinary music, Fox devised a non-invasive narrative peek into the backstory of Mozart and his world.  

Fox’s Mozart-as-Everyman story launched immediately after the Impresario overture on Saturday evening. Hollywood actor/comedian Tim Bagley (Will & Grace) entered the stage to read a scatological but fun letter from the young genius to his female cousin. After breaking culture and class stereotypes with a dose of Mozart’s delightfully descriptive potty mouth, Bagley reminded all what we were likely doing as ‘tweens (stomping in mud puddles was my favorite activity) while Mozart at the same age was touring Europe as a violin prodigy, composing masterpieces by the gigaton.

Saturday night’s concert continued in the same key as Impresario, a nice segue from one work to the other - the Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra in C major, K. 299/297c (1778). Amy Tatum flute, and Michelle Temple harp gave this classic of the repertoire a reading that was fresh as well as fascinating.

Amy Tatum, principal flute with Santa Barbara Symphony since 2023 plays all over the place including regularly for LA Opera, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, New West Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale, and Long Beach Opera.

Michelle Temple has been principal harp with Santa Barbara Symphony since 1991 and for Pacific Symphony since 1994. She also serves as principal harp for Opera Santa Barbara, and undoubtedly gigs extensively throughout southern California, and beyond.

Out of the gate the two were pals in perspicacity, brushing a cobweb or two off this gorgeous and regularly performed work. The duo cadenzas they presented throughout the concerto were wonderful to enjoy (author?), because fresh to these ears. The lovely cadenza at the end of the Allegro for example, ushered the beautifully expressive Andantino into the soundscape, both artists enlightening the aesthetic with lots of dynamic contrast, subtly shaded colors, and pithy rubato.

After another wonderful duo cadenza, the two matching each other’s finesse equally, the last movement Rondeau-Allegro. Tricky this one, especially for the harpist. An aura of Mozartian playfulness was successfully conjured by the two, despite some busy pedal work on the harp! Breezy conducting from Kabaretti, and tight nearly gossamer playing from the orchestra closed a delightful first half of Saturday’s program in style.

After intermission, a brief return to the stage by Tim Bagley to enlighten the audience on the quasi-Oedipal, reasonably dysfunctional yet also loving co-dependency between Mozart and his father, Leopold. The narrative, which Jonathan Fox honed from source materials and letters was, in a canny coup de théâtre, the perfect setup for the creative if occasionally bruised fruit of this manager/artist, father/son connubial conundrum.

The Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218 composed at the age of 19 in 1775 to use as a touring showpiece for himself along with the other violin concertos the young Mozart composed between 1773 and 1775 represents at a psychological sub-basement level, the pressure from the father to produce fresh material for tours, and the resultant brilliance unleashed from that parental pressure point.  

Another blockbuster performance was on tap. Jessica Guideri’s stunning interpretation of the work was as fresh and exciting as it gets. Concertmaster of Santa Barbara Symphony since 2015, Jessica Guideri has held principal positions with several orchestras including the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, and Phoenix Symphony. Her Hollywood film and TV studio recording gigs indicate she’s at the top of the contractor lists for the best recording orchestras in the business.

Training and professionalism showed in her impeccably executed and innovative - fabulous and fresh cadenzas - interpretation of the work. Breathtaking articulation, pure, ringing tone production with superlative intonation, not to mention her significant palate of dynamic nuance, breathed life and rhythm into every movement of the concerto.

The first movement Allegro instantly cleared the air about where Guideri stands in the fiddle firmament. It could have been hallucination, but I swear Guideri deciphered, for that is what performing great music is about, a few things I had never heard before including perhaps, her unearthing of a prescient subconscious (Mozart’s) fragment in the first movement that reminded this listener for the first time of the composer’s coloratura aria for the Queen of the Night, Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen (Hell's vengeance boils in my heart).

It’s possible Guideri discovered and showed us a shard that might have grown in the composer’s mind over time, to be found fully developed years later in The Magic Flute (1791). Fresh discovery or hallucination, it doesn’t matter. The performance was revelatory.

The solo cadenza into the slow movement Andante contabile jumped off the page for this listener - a version I had never heard before. A fabulous choice of cadenza (there are many), which was modern in a Classic Period way, and fresh. The house listened in fascinated silence. Have I mentioned Guideri plays with authority and finesse? Her performance of the Andante cantabile was expressive certainly, but with added dollops of color and powerful but contained energy in super-soft passage work that electrified.

The last movement Rondeau: Andante grazioso - Allegro ma non troppo, one of the jewels of the violin concerto repertoire for its coy and youthful playfulness, was the more remarkable in this performance by Guideri. A stout if also playful performance, it was altogether genuine in temperament, thus engaging. The violinist gave us intellectual nourishment in spades, and also bathed us in her considerable elegance and style. Maestro Kabaretti and the orchestra gave back in kind.

To conclude this first of two ridiculously pleasant Mozart Marathon concerts, the Symphony No. 35 in D major (Haffner), K. 385 (1782). A work of Holy Grail-like significance and familiarity to orchestra musicians amateur and professional alike since, well, 1782, the Santa Barbara Symphony, Nir Kabaretti at the helm, offered a brisk and velveteen performance of its four iconic movements that was light, enthusiastic, candidly bracing, and completely satisfying. 

Daniel Kepl | performingartsreview.net