Image: Johann Nepomuk Hummel | Romualdo López Ballesteros, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Santa Barbara Music Club celebrates its fifty-sixth season of serving the greater Santa Barbara community with free monthly concerts. The music club’s VALENTINE’S DAY CONCERT will be presented on February 14 at 3 PM at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 4575 Auhay Drive, Santa Barbara (enter parking lot from Arroyo). Violist Valerie Malvinni will perform two unaccompanied works, by J.S. Bach and Leslie Hogan, then will be joined by pianist Peter Wittenberg for Glazunov’s richly lyrical Elégie, Op. 44 and Hummel’s playful Potpourri (“Fantasie”) for viola and orchestra, Op.94. In the second half of the program, soprano Brett Mutinelli and pianist Chika Nobumori will present a series of delightful German art song miniatures from the 19th century, exploring the many facets of love—from its joys and heartaches to its dangers and rejections, love found and love lost, as well as the exhilaration of new love and the serenity of love matured. Admission is Free
Program Details
Text: Friedrich Rückert
Text: August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben
Notes on the Program
The program opens with J.S. Bach’s bright and cheerful Cello Suite No.3 in C major, BWV 1009, arranged by Valerie Malvinni for viola. The second unaccompanied work is Leslie Hogan’s Matisse. Written in 2005 for the choreographer Carol Press, the work was also originally for cello and is by turns lyrical and energetic.
Rounding out the first half of the program are two works for viola and piano, Glazunov’s richly lyrical Elégie, Op. 44 and Hummel’s playful Potpourri (“Fantasie”) for viola and orchestra, Op.94. The Hummel features quotations from operas by Mozart and Rossini.
Those works, performed by Ms. Malvinni and pianist Peter Wittenberg, will serve as a preview for a full sonata program, sponsored by Santa Barbara City College, on the next day. The sonata concert will be at 3 PM at First United Methodist Church. Tickets will be available through the SBCC Garvin Theatre Box Office.
Ms. Mutinelli and her accompanist Chika Nobumori will present a series of delightful German art song miniatures from the 19th century, exploring the many facets of love—from its joys and heartaches to its dangers and rejections, love found and love lost, as well as the exhilaration of new love and the serenity of love matured. Featured composers will include Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert, Richard Strauss, and Robert Schumann.
The Performers
Valerie Malvinni, an avid performer and teacher on the violin and viola, is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Viola at University of Missouri, Columbia where she also serves as Executive Director of the Missouri String Project. She has taught violin, viola and chamber music at many schools and colleges including Santa Barbara City College, Westmont College, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, and the Suzuki Violin School of Santa Barbara.
As an orchestral player, Valerie held principal positions with the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, SB Symphony and was principal viola of the Haddonfield Symphony (now called Symphony in C) under Alan Gilbert. She was a regular substitute with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for many years, performing under the direction of both Esa-Peka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel. A passionate chamber musician, she was mentored by Isaac Stern, Guarneri Quartet, Emerson Quartet, Juilliard Quartet,Takács Quartet, American Quartet, and Robert McDonald. She is currently the violist in the Esterházy string quartet in residence at Missouri, which has been in existence for over 50 years.
Valerie has performed in some notable halls such as Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Library of Congress, and with members of the NY Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic and internationally at Réncontres Musicales d’Evian. She is a graduate of Curtis Institute of Music where her teachers included Karen Tuttle, Felix Galimir, and Joseph dePasquale, and with Heiichiro Ohyama for her Master of Music degree from University of California Santa Barbara, and finally did doctoral studies at UCLA with Ralph Fielding and Paul Coletti.
This summer, Valerie is looking forward to teaching and performing at the Chigiana Global Academy Program in Siena, Italy.
Pianist Peter Wittenberg was born into a musical family of Latvian heritage. His father played viola, double bass, and guitar, and his mother was an opera singer. He began piano studies at an early age and at the age of 16, he won the Bronislaw Kaper award from the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing the Prokofiev 2nd Piano Concerto. Since then he has performed in international concert halls such as the Frankfurt Alte Oper, the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, the Grossersaal of the Mozarteum Stiftung, the Athenaeum Bucharest, the Allerheiligen Hofkirche in Munich, Carnegie Weill Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York City, the Baden-Baden Philharmonie, and many others.
Soprano Brett Mutinelli grew up in Germany’s opera world where her father had a successful career as a Helden tenor. After receiving her own opera training at the Wiesbaden Music Conservatory in Germany and at UCSB, studying with Elizabeth Mannion and receiving a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance, Ms. Mutinelli performed in various local recitals and opera productions. She chose to pursue a career locally as a voice teacher by building the Young Singers Club in 1998, a thriving voice course program for children and teens.
Chika Nobumori, pianist is a DMA candidate in Piano Performance at the University of California, Santa Barbara, studying with Robert Koenig. A native of Japan, she began piano studies at age four and appeared as a concerto soloist by seventeen. She holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from UCLA and an M.M. in Piano Performance from California State University, Northridge. An active performer and educator, she has appeared throughout Southern California and currently serves as an adjunct collaborative pianist at Westmont College.
