The first significant concert of the new year will be another free gift from the Santa Barbara Music Club.

It will happen at 3 p.m. Saturday in the Faulkner Gallery of the downtown Public Library. As per the club’s sterling practice, the concert is free and the public warmly invited.

Two works for violin and piano grace the program: Ludwig Beethoven’s Violin-Piano Sonata No. 4 in A-Minor, Opus 23, performed by violinist Han Soo Kim and pianist Neil Di Maggio; and César Franck’s Violin-Piano Sonata in A-Major (1886), played by violinist Nicole McKenzie and pianist Betty Oberacker.

“In the remarkable Fourth Sonata in A-Minor, Opus 23,” Sidney Finkelstein writes, “Beethoven produced a dazzling experiment, standing on its head the customary clear and logical flow of ideas in the classic form, writing music of constant starts, stops, and surprises … not only does Beethoven dispense with a broadly lyrical slow movement, he also constantly interlaces its passion with a roguish and fantastic humor.”

It was wise of the club to have the Franck sonata follow the Beethoven. Franck was too kind and sympathetic a man to have much in the way of a sense of humor, but he possessed a passionate, generous lyricism that makes a lovely palliative to Beethoven’s restless agitation. He wrote this sonata as a wedding present for his fellow Belgian, the Eugene Ysaÿe, and so the young virtuoso spent the morning of his nuptials, not focusing his soul on the sacrament of marriage, but learning and rehearsing the sonata, which he later played — duh — perfectly.

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— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.