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Read In Memoriam: Emma Lou Diemer 1927-2024

Tributes and Triumphs

The special honor for most of us who knew American composer and longtime Santa Barbara resident Emma Lou Diemer (1927-2024) was the opportunity to bask even briefly, in the aura of her indefatigable energy. Like the sprawling prairie from which she came, the Kansas-born composer, who died here at 97 in June 2024, lived every minute of her time with us in happiness, joy, and a purposeful Somewhere Over the Rainbow optimism.

Tiny in stature, seemingly fragile as Delft though actually tough as nails with a side order of discipline, Diemer’s sincerely cheerful personality, her enthusiasm for just about everything, and most importantly her steadfast musical integrity, made her life and music a bright shining object in the classical music firmament. Diemer’s prodigious folio of works large and small are her legacy for us all to enjoy.

Music and Artistic Director Nir Kabaretti and the Santa Barbara Symphony opened the orchestra’s 72nd season on October 19 at the Granada Theatre with a particularly apt tribute to Emma Lou Diemer’s creative compositional skills - a work of hers utilizing late Romantic orchestrations, like-minded ensemble balances and colors together with devilish-clever manipulations and melodic references to the composer being “homaged.”

Commissioned and premiered by the Santa Barbara Symphony in 2001, Homage to Tchaikovsky is a feisty concert opener of about six minutes. A perfect musical bon voyage to Emma Lou from her friends and musical colleagues in Santa Barbara, Homage bubbled with energy, pulse, optimism, and not a few winks and nods. Diemer’s playful tunes passed through various departments of the orchestra with sly accessibility and an unmistakably sassy American musical attitude.

Were bits of Tchaikovsky tunes present, however fractured, in Diemer’s compositional mashup? Honestly, I didn’t hear any in 2001, nor at this second opportunity on October 19, which is likely the point. Every time I convince myself there are no recognizable Tchaikovsky tune fragments in the piece, I see Emma Lou Diemer’s face looking down at me with that famously disarming twinkle in her eye!

The composer admitted in an earlier program note the piece was her first use of the technique of hiding fragments and other characteristics of one composer within a “fresh” composition by another. If themes from Tchaikovsky’s jukebox are there, hats off to Diemer’s skills at smoke and mirrors, the very object of the exercise. Kabaretti and the orchestra gave their own homage to Diemer’s genius with a performance that bristled with playful energy and technical expertise.   

I remember my first encounter (it was visual) with Joaquín Rodrigo’s eponymous Concierto de Aranjuez for Guitar and Orchestra (1939). I was in high school (1963-1966) taking college-level summer classes at UC Santa Barbara. Exploring the Student Union building one day I found, running the length of a long interior hallway corridor, a seven-inch-high strip of colorful graphic art depicting in Schenkerian musical analysis style, a visual representation of the forms, structures, harmonic progress and resolutions of Concierto de Aranjuez.

I must stop by one day and see if it’s still there or painted over. In any case, that graphic and the time it took to create it speaks to the popularity of Rodrigo’s concerto over the decades since it’s premiere in 1939.

Like Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, most people have heard and recognize Rodrigo’s masterpiece, or bits of it. In both cases, the public might not know who the composers are, but can recognize the tunes. As career paths go, a composer can’t ask for much better.   

Before the performance on October 19 by Spanish guitarist Pablo Sáinz-Villegas, who is a favorite guest artist with the orchestra, I had not heard the work performed in truly Iberian fado/flamenco (evocative/provocative) temperament - the key to its soul.

The concerto speaks with energy and rhythm of which it has plenty, but prior to Sáinz-Villegas’ interpretation, I had not experienced the sense of historical zeitgeist (Moorish conquest and removal) that informs Sáinz-Villegas’ sensibility. His psychologically piercing and genuinely authentic interpretation at so many levels, was a revelation.

The first movement Allegro con spirito, seemed at first quite straightforward, but it didn’t take long to realize Sáinz-Villegas’ performance was different from most - calm in execution, no drama. A meditative and appropriately melancholic performance that gave the movement new meaning and mysterious atavistic heft. Kabaretti and the orchestra obliged with incredibly sensitive collaboration.

The second movement Adagio, found Sáinz-Villegas in particularly magnificent expressive form, his playing regal, sophisticated, wildly expressive, while also superbly articulate; angst and joy commingling in a glory of sweet and savory irony.

During the solo cadenza before the last movement Allegro gentile, Sáinz-Villegas emphasized dissonant harmonics in a manner I’d not heard before - shocking, heartfelt, and meaningful. Powerful stuff. The audience received his charismatic playing with hushed obeisance, preparing perhaps unconsciously for the unfettered solidarity of technique and execution Sáinz-Villegas brought to the last movement itself.

His encore, Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla’s Viva Tango in an arrangement for guitar and orchestra. Delightful.

Considering the moniker for the October 19-20 Santa Barbara Symphony concert pair was Tchaikovsky Immersion, there was little left for audience imagination than to experience one of the composer’s rip-snorting symphonies to close the evening with panache. Maestro Kabaretti, who has conducted the work on numerous occasions and knows it from memory, decided the composer’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 would fit the bill. It did, handsomely.

With Kabaretti at the helm, and the orchestra an ensemble of professionals from Santa Barbara and Los Angeles who have played together for decades, it will cause no surprise to report the performance was stunning. With so many technical challenges in its four comprehensive and complicated movements, so much exposed section playing and unforgiving writing for horns to say nothing of the monumental arc of Tchaikovsky’s mighty vision, the No. 4 was the proverbial cherry on an evening of wonder.      

Daniel Kepl | performingartsreview.net

“I try to use words as I would sounds - I want them to have meaning and create visualization.”