Classical Power Trio Comes to Granada Theater
Santa Barbara audiences are familiar with what the virtuoso pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet has to offer. He’s been in orchestral and chamber settings on Santa Barbara stages and, on local/global screens, had his performances interwoven into such films as Wes Anderson’s lovably quirky The French Dispatch and the more serious business of Atonement.
Something slightly different this way comes with Thibaudet’s next Santa Barbara visit, when he engages in an intimate chamber music trio context at the Granada Theatre on Tuesday, October 10, the kickoff concert of the classical component of UCSB’s Arts & Lectures series. He will perform with the Georgia-born/Germany-based violinist List Batiashvili and French cellist Gautier Capuçon on the trio’s first U.S. tour, featuring a program of opuses by Haydn, Ravel, and Mendelssohn.
Born in Lyon, France, Thibaudet lives in Paris and also Los Angeles, where he’s extending his passion for education at the Colburn School while keeping connections to our own Music Academy. The latest entry in his 50-plus discography, mostly on the Decca label, is 2021’s Carte Blanche, an aptly-titled personal statement presenting favorite piano pieces previously unrecorded by the pianist. His broad tastes take him through music of Schubert, Chopin, Couperin, and onto left-of-standard fare music by Villa-Lobos, Gershwin, and Martin Gould’s “Boogie Woogie Etude.”
Tbilisi-born Batiashvili has gained increasing attention and critical kudos for her own blend of virtuosity and wide-ranging musical curiosity. Her own discography, as a Deutsche Grammaphon artist, includes the 2020 album City Lights, featuring Charlie Chaplin’s own music from his famed film, along with a diverse array including Bach, Strauss, Astor Piazzolla, and Michel Legrand.
Cellist Capuçon, a prodigious musician whose work ranges from classic to contemporary music, joins the eclectic album-making cause with such projects as last year’s Sensations, on the Erato label. Legrand also figures into the cellist’s recorded playlist, with “I Will Wait for You” and “The Windmills of Your Mind,” and also checks in with Samual Barber, classical taste treats from Grieg, Dvorak, Prokofiev, and Puccini. The 20-track album also dips into the populism of “Singing in the Rain,” Bert Kaempfert, and Leonard Bernstein’s “Mambo” to close on a perky note.
Eclecticism aside, the trio’s agenda on its U.S. tour and in the embrace of the Granada heads more-or less-straight down the middle of classical repertoire, with individual and collective mastery in its favor.Tue., Oct. 10, 7 p.m., Granada Theater; artsandlectures.ucsb.edu
