The outstanding chamber music organization, Camerata Pacifica, plays its February concert locally at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8, in Hahn Hall, Music Academy of the West, 1070 Fairway Road.
The program, bearing the self-explanatory motto Beethoven & Reich will consist of two works by Ludwig Beethoven: “Piano & Violin Sonata No, 7, Opus 30, No. 2″(1803) and “Piano Sonata No. 32 in c-minor, Opus 111” (1822); and one by Steve Reich: “Different Trains for String Quartet and Tape” (1988).
The performers will be Kristin Lee and Jason Uyeyama, violins; Richard O’Neill, viola; Ani Aznavoorian, cello; and Gilles Vonsattel, piano.
We are accustomed to calling them “violin sonatas” — or, sensitive to the feelings of the collaborators, “violin and piano sonatas” — but Beethoven himself called them sonatas “for piano and violin.”
This is more, I think, than the subconscious deference to the instrument of which he was a peerless master. It suggests a deliberate reverse of the traditional balance of the two. But I am not a musicologist, and the violin part sounds plenty important — more, at least, than mere continuo.
One of my boyhood pals was a violinist in the Vancouver Symphony. On one of my visits to my friend’s house, I brought his father a recording of the Budapest Quartet playing “Beethoven’s Quartet in c#-minor.”
He was delighted, and took me into his study to show me an engraving of the composer playing the violin.
“You see?” said Mr. Marx. “He could play the fiddle.” For a moment, he stared at the engraving intently. Then said, “He was an ugly man, alas.”
Should this concert sell out, as they are wont to do, this program will also be performed at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10, in the Museum of Ventura County, 100 E. Main St., Ventura; at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 12, in Rothenberg Hall of The Huntington Museum in San Marino, 1151 Oxford Road; and 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 14, in Zipper Hall of The Colburn School in Los Angeles, 200 S. Grand Ave.
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.