Good afternoon. It’s so great to see you here at our third Saturday afternoon concert of the 2021-2022 Music Club season.
This is a highly emotional time for me and I will try hard to keep it together. My Mom’s family came from Kyiv. My Dad’s family came from Zhitomer, a city about 2 hours west of Kyiv via E40. So I am of 100% Ukrainian descent and you can imagine how horrified and angry I am at Putin’s self-indulgent invasion of my ancestral homeland. I am at the same time thrilled to see the Ukrainians come together to protect their home with such ferocity and intelligence and to rally around their duly elected president.
In these times, I find solace and inspiration in music. The power of music to inspire, energize, and heal cannot be overestimated. For example, I am thrilled that the Ukrainians have blocked Russian propaganda broadcasts and replaced them with Ukrainian songs.
This, of course, underlies the mission of the Music Club. I’ve recently upgraded the Music Club website. My eventual goal is to concstruct an archive of every concert presented by the Music Club over its 50 years of existence. For now, I am working backward and am loading in concerts from the 2017-2018 season. I noted that the concert of January 13, 2018 needed to be postponed to January 20, 2018 due to the devastating Thomas fire and subsequent deadly debris flow. Some of the musicians literally couldn’t get to Santa Barbara to perform, but eventually the music prevailed and we gave the concert.
More recently, we were forced to cancel the Spring component of our 50th anniversary season, and we weren’t able to schedule concerts for the entire 2020-2021 season. We are back though, in this beautiful and welcoming church, and will continue our concerts here starting in April, at the conclusion of the the Lenten season. We are taking things very carefully to protect our audience members—that’s why we have continued our vaccination and masking policies.
Aside from the pure joy of listening to wonderful music, this concert has quite a bit of relevance to current events. Johannes Brahms lived in a relatively comfortable bourgeois constitutional monarchy. However, when the Trio you are about to hear was written, the German Empire was ruled by Kaiser Willhelm II, a malignant narcissist not unlike the former president. Barbara Tuchman shows us that a combination of paranoia and the need for narcissistic supply led him to invade Belgium and touch off the first world war. Let’s hope that Putin doesn’t touch off a third one.
On the other hand, Prokofiev was constrained by the maniacal vicissitudes of Stalin’s reign, seeing his works alternately praised and banned. His death was virtually unnoticed, having occurred on the same day as Stalin’s. Now, the fate of Ukraine and the world is hanging at the whim of an unhinged Stalinist with nuclear capabilities.
Finally, as a Jew, Darius Milhaud was forced to flee France in 1940 to escape the puppet government of another unhinged maniac with military powers. France’s loss was our gain, and I was able to study with him at Aspen in the summer of 1969. This occurrence affected me deeply and led me to pursue my higher education as a composer. If you go to our website, the concert listing features a picture of Milhaud that I took in his studio back then.
As you can see, today’s performance is very meaningful to me. I thank you for your indulgence in hearing about my personal connection to the pieces to be performed today.
If you can indulge me just a bit further, I’d like to remind you that the Music Club is a non-profit organization that benefits from the contributions of its members to present music free to the community.
Also, I’m thrilled to announce that our scholarship program will be taking place this Spring. This program is fully funded through contributions—and the more money you donate, the more scholarship funds we can disburse to our talented young performers—the future of music in this community and even the world. The Music Club has licensed new software and you will soon be able to contribute by credit card, e-check, or personal check. Of course, cash donations are always welcome and we have our contribution boxes set up at the back of the church.
Thank you once again for your attention and enjoy the concert!