Image: Clay Taliaferro, original choreographer of Harsher Landscapes
On Saturday, January 11 at 3:00 p.m. the Santa Barbara Music Club will present another program in its popular series of beautiful classical-music concerts. Today’s program includes flutist Suzanne Duffy and pianist Kacey Link performing Ernst (Ernő) von Dohnányi’s Aria, Op. 48, No. 1, the world premiere of Katherine Saxon’s Forgotten Memories, and the Cantabile et Presto by Georges Enescu. Next, Eric Valinsky plays his Sonata No. 5, “Harsher Landscapes,” followed by Neil Di Maggio’s interpretation of the Johannes Brahms Rhapsody in E-flat, Op. 119, No 4 for piano. The program concludes with Andrea and Neil Di Maggio’s performance of Carl Reinecke’s Ballade for flute and piano. This concert will be held at First United Methodist Church, 305 E. Anapamu Street at Garden, Santa Barbara. Admission is free.
Program Details
(1881-1955)
Kacey Link, piano
(b. 1952)
(1824-1910)
Neil Di Maggio, piano
(1833-1897)
Notes on the Program
Amid the surge of Modernism, Hungarian composer Ernst (Ernő) von Dohnányi (1877–1960) distinguished himself as a paragon of Romanticism. His style remained consistent through his last opus number, which includes the Aria, Op. 48, No. 1, for flute and piano, performed this afternoon by flutist Suzanne Duffy and pianist Kacey Link. Dohnányi dedicated the Aria to the virtuoso flutist Ellie Baker, who wrote the work is “a billowing and passionate little piece brimming with romance and longing.” She continues that the work recalls the music of Brahms, a towering figure in Dohnányi’s formation as a composer.
Suzanne Duffy and Kacey Link continue with the world premiere of Katherine Saxon’s (b. 1981) Forgotten Memories. The composer offers the following words about the piece: “Memory is fallible, imprecise and changeable. Each time we draw a memory to the fore of our mind we re-remember it, changing details and forgetting others. Memories can be fabricated: childhood photographs and stories create memories of memories we have forgotten … My father’s ancestors fled the Russian Empire during the 19th century during implementation of anti-Semitic policies. Immigrants, refugees, or even, perhaps, fugitives, they changed their names like people change clothes, to hide, to blend in, to forget. Through creative forms of remembering and misremembering, this piece reflects on ideas of roots, family, loss, and how, even in the absence of memories, we imagine stories to tell us who we are.”
Duffy and Link conclude their set with the Cantabile et Presto by Romanian composer Georges Enescu (1881–1955), who, by all standards, was a prodigy. His musical pursuits brought him to Paris in 1894—at age 16—and he studied with Massenet and Fauré. Despite his young age, critics considered his music mature. Ten years later, Enescu became a member of the examining committee at the Conservatoire de Paris, and he composed challenging works for students to perform at their juries. Among them was the Cantabile et Presto. The work allows the performers to explore the expressive sonorities and challenges of the instruments in the former movement and virtuosity in the latter movement.
Of Eric Valinsky’s Piano Sonata No. 5, “Harsher Landscapes,” the composer writes: “Harsher Landscapes is dedicated to Clay Taliaferro, who originally commissioned the work in 1979 for a dance he choreographed for the Davis Center Dancers. It was revised and expanded twice, finally in 1983 to produce a concert version. This concert version was choreographed by Lizabeth Skalski for the New American Ballet Ensemble in New York. The piece is in one movement, made up of several small sections, some of which recur, and most of which cover the tonal areas of E major and minor as well as the relative keys of G major and minor. Out of the small sections, three major sections may be discerned: an opening waltz-like section; a slow, meditative section; and a final section, virtuosic and fast, during which the waltz returns. I often think of how at the Music Club we promote our “concerts of beautiful classical music.” I’d like to think that this piece has its moments of beauty, but in all, it portrays a pretty harsh, nasty landscape, perhaps evocative of an intense, passionate relationship gone wrong—which I believe was the unspoken intent of the original choreographer.”
Pianist Neil Di Maggio continues with the Rhapsody in E-flat, Op. 119, No 4, by Johannes Brahms (1833–1897). Brahms composed the work in 1893, towards the end of his life, and grouped it with a set of three additional miniatures. The “Rhapsody” therefore belongs to the Klavierstücke, Op. 119—the last set of solo piano works in the composer’s catalog. In the “Rhapsody,” Brahms conveys brightness, joy, and ebullience while exploring a five-bar phrasing structure. The second section contrasts with the first by way of a slower, tender mood. For all the optimism of the piece, however, the piece ends in the parallel E-flat minor. It comes as quite a dark, almost shocking turn.
The prolific German composer Carl Reinecke (1824–1910) gained the admiration of several towering figures in Western art music circles, namely Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. Although the Ballade for Flute and Piano, Op. 288 has not received the acclaim as other works in his oeuvre, it bears the distinction of being his final composition. He wrote the Ballade in 1908 at the age of 84. Like several composers within this afternoon’s program, Reinecke was steeped in the musical world’s inexorable move towards modernity. Yet works like the Ballade, as Andrea and Neil Di Maggio show, demonstrate the notion that several composers held fast to the Romantic idiom.
The Performers
Andrea Di Maggio, Flutist, graduated from San Jose State University, summa cum laude, with a Bachelor of Music degree where she studied with Isabelle Chapuis. While attending Arizona State University, Andrea held a teaching position and worked with the undergraduate flute majors and music education students, and performed in faculty recitals. Studying with Jill Felber at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Andrea graduated with honors with a Masters Degree in Flute Performance. As flute instructor at Westmont College, she is a founding member of the woodwind quintet Sonos Montecito and a faculty member at the Westmont Academy of Young Artists. Andrea also maintains a small and competitive private flute studio, with students winning awards from the Santa Barbara Music Club, The Music Teachers Association of California, and the National Flute Association. Andrea performs on a Miyazawa flute.
Neil Di Maggio, pianist, enjoys a dual career as solo and collaborative pianist and as a researcher for Westmont College. His performing career has taken him from California to Phoenix to New York City, and he recently served on the faculty of the Westmont Academy for Young Artists. He earned his BM Degree, summa cum laude, from San Jose State University, MM Degree from the San Francisco Conservatory, and MM Degree in Collaborative Piano from UCSB, studying with Paul Berkowitz Anne Epperson, and Yael Weiss. Currently Director of Research in the Office of College Advancement at Westmont, Neil maintains a private piano studio, and his students are frequent award winners with the Santa Barbara Music Club and the Performing Arts Scholarship Foundation competitions.
Suzanne Duffy, flutist, is an active soloist and chamber musician, serves as Principal Flute for San Luis Obispo County’s Symphony of the Vines and Opera San Luis Obispo, is Second Flute/Piccolo for Opera Santa Barbara, and maintains a private teaching studio. She earned her MM Degree from Indiana University and her BM Degree from Northwestern University. A Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo faculty member since 2015, in March 2020 Suzanne will be featured faculty soloist with the Cal Poly Wind Ensemble in Stephen Bulla’s Rhapsody, and will present a repeat performance at the University of Puget Sound, Seattle.
Kacey Link is a pianist and scholar residing in Santa Barbara, CA. As a both a solo and collaborative artist, she performs regularly in Southern California and has given recitals in the United States, France, and Switzerland. She is a pianist for University of California—Santa Barbara Department of Theater and Dance and served as music director for Out of the Box Theatre Company for the 2014-2015 season. She also has worked as a pianist for Opera Santa Barbara, Kansas City Lyric Opera, and New Theatre of Kansas City as well as accompanied classes for such prestigious artists as Marilyn Horne, Yo-Yo Ma, and ballerina Heather Watts. As a scholar, her research focuses on the music of Latin America with specific concentration on tango music of Argentina and has co-authored the forthcoming book Tracing Tangueros: Argentine Instrumental Tango Music (Oxford University Press). She holds degrees from University of California – Santa Barbara (D.M.A. in Keyboard), University of Miami (M.M. in Musicology), and University of Kansas (M.M. in Accompanying, B.M. in Piano Performance).
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.
Funding support for our 50th Anniversary Season is provided by the City of Santa Barbara's Organizational Development Grant Program and by the Towbes Fund for the Performing Arts, a field of interest fund of the Santa Barbara Foundation.