After virtually owning the landscape of Santa Barbara’s summertime classical music scene for eight weeks, the Music Academy came to a momentous conclusion, with a heroic sweep and a swoon. In a display of dual angles on late 19th century romanticism, the menu at last Saturday’s Granada Theatre orchestra night veered from Strauss’ cool and vast tone poem Ein Heldenleben and the more compact and palatable tune fest of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy. The first piece challenged and enveloped. The second one soothed and brooded. One complemented the other, by contrast.
For this special finale occasion of the Academy’s 76th season, respected Finnish maestro Hannu Lintu took poetic charge of the large cast in the Academy Festival Orchestra, which sounded in its finest and most polished form yet.
While last year’s festival had the celebratory distinction of being the 75th anniversary of this West Coast classical music institution (institution in more ways than one), one distinguishing point of 2023 was the swan song of CEO/President Scott Reed. Reed has done much during his 12-year stint at the top — after 13 years of working in other capacities — to raise the bar of standards and operations at the Academy. The Reed era also involved making valuable connections in the larger classical world, establishing partnerships with the New York Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra, among other achievements of note.