The Santa Barbara Music Club audience heard a season-opening concert of true classics on Saturday, ending with Peter Schickele’s sincerely serious - but still amusing - “Serenade for Three.”

Schickele, better known as musical satirist P.D.Q. Bach, was not kidding when he wrote this trio in 1993, as violinist Emil Torick explained. Torick enlisted Nancy Mathison on clarinet and Donna Massello-Chiacos at the piano, the three calling themselves the “Trio Brio.” The third and final movement of the Schickele, titled “Variations: Fast, rowdy,” was played exactly that way, the players taking turns with quick and virtuoso solos. An added fillip was that each of the black-clad musicians wore a touch of cranberry red: the ladies with their scarves, Torick with his socks. They sent the crowd at the Faulkner Gallery out into the rainy afternoon with laughter and a decidedly upbeat attitude.

The preceding program had variety and the customary outstanding musicianship on the part of the performers. These concerts are offered on one Wednesday morning and one Saturday afternoon each month, with no charge for admission, in the downtown library’s Faulkner Gallery. There is no better bargain around.

Saturday’s program opened with Leigh Kaplan at the piano, playing “Danza de la moza donosa” from “Dances Argentinas” by modern Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. Kaplan’s interpretation was suitably glittering.