Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra Brings It All Back Home
by James Hanley Donelan
Chamber Orchestra will give us a rare musical experience: the sound
of a small orchestra. Classical music these days tends to come in
very small or very large packages, either from famous soloists or
big, bold orchestras. The in-between sound that privileged
audiences of the 18th century hired for their “chambers” (big
living rooms and dedicated music rooms — surely you have one of
those, or both) hardly finds a place in 21st-century schedules. So,
when the 30 or so members of S.B.’s Chamber Orchestra take the
stage of the Lobero this Tuesday under the baton of Heiichiro
Ohyama, we’ll hear something we can’t hear in too many other
places. The orchestra has been going strong in Santa Barbara for 28
years, and remains one of the most consistently excellent concert
experiences in the area. I recently spoke with Julie Rogers, the
principal second violinist.
What’s it like to play with an orchestra this size? What’s
different about it? It’s wonderful, but it’s difficult to describe.
First of all, everyone is really nice and it’s great to play with a
group that lets you hear how you’re playing. Everyone gets along,
and you can hear different things in the works because you’re not
lost in the huge sound of a full-size orchestra. Every piece has a
you can’t hear otherwise, and we get to do interesting things. In
this concert, for instance, we’re actually increasing the size of
the orchestration for one work. We’ve got the whole string section
playing the fugue movement from Beethoven’s String Quartet Opus 59,
No. 3 in C Major, and it sounds wonderful. Then we’re playing his
Pastoral Symphony [No. 6 in F Major] — with a much smaller
orchestra than it usually gets. We’re also playing Grieg’s Holberg
Suite, which I love, and it’s just right for a group our size.
