Season Wrap-up
By Richard Mineards, Montecito Journal
Santa Barbara Symphony wrapped its 57th season “Crescendo! The Momentum Continues” with an absolute cracker.
Maestro Nir Kabaretti was in his element conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor at The Granada, one of the rare occassions when he had to refer to a score, given the work’s considerable scale and complexity, not to mention 68 minutes in length.
The three parts were played without intermission, adding to the pulsing dynamic of the performance, which I last heard when it was conducted by the late Leonard Bernstein in New York’s Lincoln Center in the 1980s.
It is a most impressive work and the orchestra excelled itself, a fitting culmination to a most entertaining season.
The climax also saw the honoring of two notable symphony members, Gillian Launie, who ends her three-year tenure as president, and Gloria Autry, who has served as principal second violin for a most impressive 55 years.
