Image: Holiday Concert, photo by SBMC
On SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2 AT 3 PM 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 First United Methodist Church, 305 E. Anapamu Street, Santa Barbara, CA. Admission is free.
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 by W.A. Mozart, Emma Lou Diemer, and Johannes Brahms.
Program Details
(1756-1791)
- Allegro con spirito
- Andante
(b. 1927)
(1833-1897)
- Allegro non troppo
- Andante, un poco adagio
- Scherzo: Allegro
- Finale: Poco sostenuto-Allegro non troppo
Notes on the Program
Pianists Davis Reinhart and Christopher Davis will perform W.A. Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, KV 448. Composed in 1781, this Sonata is Mozart’s is one of a handful of works for two keyboards and his only sonata for that combination. It has been described as “music of pure joy – graceful, songful, elegant, and virtuosic.” Mozart wrote it for a performance he would give with Josephine von Aurnhammer, who also appeared with him in his Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra. As an aside, this sonata was the one used in the 1993 scientific study that tested the theory of the “Mozart Effect,” suggesting that Classical music increases brain activity more positively than other kinds of music.
Bradley Gregory and Tachell Gerbert will give the Santa Barbara premiere of Emma Lou Diemer’s Norteamexispanicumsake (1995). Written in 1995 for the two pianists, Emma Lou Diemer’s Norteamexispanicumsake is a celebratory work. According to the composer, it is “a slightly shorter version of a work written for the Santa Barbara Symphony early in 1995 and titled Santa Barbara Overture. The two piano version retains most of the ideas found in the overture and it is in the same jovial mood.” As the title suggests, there are many elements at work in the music, everything from musical puns on Spanish and Mexican music, suggestions of ragtime filtered through a “honky-tonk” piano, pentatonic scale figures vaguely reminiscent of Asian music, and much more.
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 import.
The Performers
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.
Tachell Gerbert and Bradley Gregory, duo pianists, have reputations as both concert performers and teachers, and established their piano teaching studio in Thousand Oaks in 1986. Prizewinners in the Performing Arts Scholarship Foundation Competition, they are active members of the Music Teachers’ Association of California (MTAC). They each received BM Degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory and MM Degrees from UCSB, with emphasis in piano ensemble. While studying at UCSB with Dr. Wendell Nelson they were introduced to the music of Emma Lou Diemer, as the Variations: Homage to Ravel, Schönberg, and May Aufderheide was written for Dr. Nelson and his wife Marjorie. Tachell and Bradley have performed this work in Italy and Japan as well as in the U.S., and in 1996 gave the premiere performance of Diemer’s duo piano work, Norteamexispanicumsake, which was composed for them.
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.
Davis Reinhart, pianist, is 15 years old and a sophomore at Santa Ynez Valley High School. His musical studies began at age 4 at the Lompoc School of Music, studying with Dr. Bridget Hough and Jessica Collier, and he participated in numerous adjudications with the International Conservatory of Music Educators, receiving five Guild Awards. Davis performed three times at the annual Santa Maria Youth Showcase, sponsored by the Santa Maria Philharmonic Society, and has done independent study through the Royal Conservatory of Music, earning first class honors. Currently studying piano with Dr. Christopher Davis at the Santa Barbara School of Music, he plays trumpet with the Santa Ynez Valley Jazz Band and High School Jazz Club and also dances tap and hip-hop at the Fossemalle Dance Studio in Santa Ynez.
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.
