The next program in Camerata Pacifica’s Why Beethoven? plays in Santa Barbara at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4, in Hahn Hall, at the Music Academy of the West, 1070 Fairway Road.

The same program will be performed at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3, in Zipper Hall of The Colburn School in Los Angeles, 200 S. Grand Ave.; 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6, in the Museum of Ventura County, 100 E. Main St., Ventura; and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, in Rothenberg Hall of The Huntington Museum, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino.
 
There are two works on the program: Ludwig Beethoven‘s “String Quartet No. 15 in a-minor, Opus 132” (1825), performed by Joseph Lin and Tricia Park, violins; Melissa Reardon, viola; and Andrew Janss, cello; and Franz Schubert‘s “Piano Sonata in Bb-Major, D. 960” (1828) played by pianist Gilles Vonsattel. Lin, former first violin of the Juilliard Quartet, makes his Camerata Pacifica debut on this program.

It is likely no works by Beethoven have been written about more than the so-called “Late Quartets.” Yet, they remain relatively unfamiliar to audiences. (All hail the Camerata for sprinkling them through their marvelous “Beethoven” seasons!)

There is a perceived “difficulty,” as if Beethoven had ventured too far ahead of his listeners. Supposing that to be true (though I don’t think it is), it is unlikely, nearly two centuries later, that we will ever catch up.

Although the five quartets differ from each other to a remarkable degree, it is generally true they evince a more serious mood than works from an earlier period (those of us who have entered, or passed through, our sixth decade will have no “difficulty” in understanding how this can be).

But Beethoven is still Beethoven, and the life force continues to well up in him unabated. In this Opus 132, the fourth movement march is positively ebullient, while the last movement — marked “allegro appassionato” is suffused with the gaiety that is one of Beethoven’s supreme gifts. It’s hardly the last will and testament of a man about to lay down and die. If you want morbid, go to Chopin or Berlioz.

Schubert’s last three piano sonatas have been picked over by musicologists, professional and amateur, almost as much as the Beethoven late quartets, and they are even less in need of any scholarly exegesis.

Schubert didn’t do heavy — his slow movements have all the solemnity of a mist floating above a woodland lake on a summer morning. I reject out of hand the notion that he — or, indeed, Beethoven — was watching his death approach as he wrote these late masterpieces.

If you hadn’t been told he finished the D. 960 sonata a scant two months before he died, you would not guess it from listening. It is an exquisite dream from start to finish, and I do not doubt he was planning his next work as he wrote the final notes.

Admission to all venues is $58. For tickets and other information, show up at the box office, call the Camerata Pacifica, 805-884-8410, or email tickets@cameratapacifica.org.

— 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.