Image: Darius Milhaud, photo by Eric Valinsky, Aspen 1969
On SATURDAY, December 19 at 3 p.m. the SANTA BARBARA MUSIC CLUB will present another program in its popular series of concerts of beautiful Classical music. This concert will be held at the First United Methodist Church.
One of the highlights of Santa Barbara Music Club’s concerts is the opportunity for audiences to hear great music from a variety of historical periods, with a diversity of musical forms, performed by excellent artists. This concert features music for two pianos from the Romantic and Contemporary periods.
Program Details
(1892-1974)
- Vif
- Modéré
- Brazileira
(1833-1897)
- Allegro non troppo
- Andante, un poco adagio
- Scherzo: Allegro
- Finale: Poco sostenuto-Allegro non troppo
Notes on the Program
by Betty Oberacker
One of the highlights of Santa Barbara Music Club’s concerts is the opportunity for audiences to hear great music from a variety of historical periods, with a diversity of musical forms, performed by excellent artists. This concert features music for two pianos from the Romantic and Contemporary periods.
The program opens with pianists Bridget Hough and Christopher Davis performing the ebullient Scaramouche, Op. 165b by Darius Milhaud. The suite’s title is not taken from the fictional character created by Rafael Sabatini, but from the Theâtre Scaramouche, headed by Henri Pascar, which specialized in productions aimed at children and for which the composer had contributed music for Moliére’s Le medécin volant (The Flying Doctor). Responding to a request from Milhaud’s pianist friends Marguerite Long and Marcelle Meyer to compose a work for them to perform at the 1937 Paris Exposition, he recycled parts of Le medécin volant to form the outer movements of the suite (Vif and Brazileira-Mouvement de Samba), then extracted part of a piece he had written for Jules Superville’s 1936 play Bolivar for the middle movement (Modéré).
As it turned out, Scaramouche became so popular that Milhaud was pressured to create numerous arrangements for publishers, and the effervescent vitality and charm of the music has made it an audience favorite and one of the mainstays of the piano duo repertoire.
Pianists Betty Oberacker and Eric Valinsky conclude the program with one of Johannes Brahms’ most magnificent – yet seldom performed – creations: the Sonata in F minor, Op. 34b. Interestingly, Brahms had originally formulated the work for string quintet, but then destroyed that score after converting it to this two-piano format and giving the premiere performance with the virtuoso pianist Carl Tausig. He subsequently arranged the two-piano score for the version in which it is now known, his Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 (but with this this history notwithstanding, the two-piano version is typically considered an arrangement of the Piano Quintet, and is even listed as such on the title page of the two-piano score!).
The sonata’s four movements comprise a compendium of not only Brahms’ incredible romantic beauty and compositional mastery, but a massive structure of symphonic scope: from the secure assurance of the exciting “Allegro non troppo” through the velvet texture and yearning melodic passion of the “Andante, un poco adagio,” through the wild syncopation and relentless brooding of the “Scherzo: Allegro,” through to the mysterious introduction bursting into the triumphant outburst of the Hungarian-inspired “Finale: Poco sostenuto-Allegro non troppo” we experience a singularly powerful affirmation, a dark, mighty work of tremendous substance and import.
The Performers
Bridget Hough, pianist, is equally at home in solo, chamber, and duo repertoire, and is regularly engaged for competitions, performances, and recording projects. A piano student of Paul Berkowitz, Robert Koenig, and Betty Oberacker, she has been an invited pianist for summer festivals, including SongFest at the Colburn School (Los Angeles), the Schubert-Institut (Austria), and the Fall Island Vocal Arts Seminar, where she was a Fellow for two seasons. She earned her B.M. Degree summa cum laude and her D.M.A. Degree from UCSB. Committed to new music, Dr. Hough has premiered works by many contemporary composers, including Tom Cipullo, Juliana Hall, Jake Heggie, Libby Larsen, Thea Musgrave, John Musto and John Villar.
Christopher Davis, pianist, has been concerto soloist with several orchestras including the Northwest Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, and has studied with renowned teachers and scholars in Germany, Austria, and Portugal. He earned his BA Degree from UC San Diego, his MM Degree from the University of Arkansas, and his DMA Degree from UCSB. In addition to serving as the Music Academy of the West’s House Manager (2009-2016), Dr. Davis has been on the staff of the Ojai Music Festival and Westmont College (2014-2016), and has worked for Camerata Pacifica, collaborating independently with many of their musicians.
Betty Oberacker, pianist, is internationally acclaimed for her interpretations of both traditional and contemporary solo and chamber music repertoire, and has toured throughout Europe, Israel, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the U.S., including performances at Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonic Hall and Vienna Musikverein. She has been Artist-in-Residence at 55 universities, conservatories and music festivals worldwide, and many important composers have dedicated their compositions to her. Her musical gifts were evidenced at three, when she began to play the piano and compose entirely by ear. Piano lessons started at age seven, and at nine she was accepted on scholarship as the only child student of the noted pianist Beryl Rubinstein. Her BM/MM Degrees are from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and her DMA Degree is from Ohio State University, where she was concomitantly a member of the piano faculty. Her discography includes Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Clavier Records), A Bach Commemorative Recital (MIT Great Performances Archives), Chamber Music of Emma Lou Diemer (Orion), Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (Century), John Biggs’ Variations on a Theme of Shostakovich (VMM), and Diemer’s Piano Concerto (MMC), the latter two works composed for Oberacker. Honors accorded her include a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Italy and the University of California Distinguished Teaching Award, and her students hold important positions as performers and teachers in the U.S., Asia and Europe. Dr. Oberacker is UCSB Professor Emeritus, and enjoys an active performing, teaching and chamber music coaching schedule.
A native Manhattanite, Eric Valinsky has, for more years than he would like to admit, maintained dual careers in computer systems architecture and music. He was educated at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the University of Illinois, finally achieving his DMA in music composition from Columbia University. He studied composition with Walter Aschaffenburg, Salvatore Martirano, Jack Beeson, and Darius Milhaud; piano with Sara Crawford Drogheo and Emil Danenberg; and conducting with Harold Farberman. While living in Los Angeles, he became music director and composer-in-residence for The Storie-Crawford Dance Theatre Ensemble. Returning to New York, he served in a similar capacity for Danny Buraczeski’s Jazzdance, Uris Bahr and Dancers, and The New American Ballet Ensemble as well as composer-in-residence for The Rachel Harms Dance Company, Opera Uptown, and the Dance Department at City College of New York. He is currently Music Director for the American Dance & Music Performance Group and moonlights as founder and partner of Inlineos LLC, a strategic Internet consulting company.
