Camerata Pacifica’s November concerts will feature the superb pianist Adam Neiman in an all-Beethoven program.
We will hear the 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Opus 120 and the Piano Sonata No. 29 in Bb-Major, Opus 106 “Hammerklavier.”
The recital will happen at 1 and 7:30 p.m. Friday in Hahn Hall on the campus of the Music Academy of the West. (Those attending the 1 p.m. performance will hear only the Diabelli Variations.)
This is a daunting program, particularly for the pianist. At the end of the evening recital, though he will not show it, Nieman is bound to be exhausted. Both works are conceived and composed on a gargantuan scale at a time when Ludwig van Beethoven’s deafness was isolating him ever further from his fellow humans, and they may both be partially explained as attempts to pound his way through the wall of silence closing him in. Yet there is no question that they are both irreplaceable works of art.
Alfred Brendel, who should know, calls the Diabelli Variations “the greatest of all piano works,” and Beethoven scholar Donald Tovey says they are “the greatest set of variations ever written.” (It will no doubt astonish Adrian Spence to learn that I disagree with Tovey on this, in favor of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, but there is no denying that the Diabelli Variations are more powerful, even more aggressive, than their 18th-century precursors.)
Even the name of the “Hammerklavier” is intimidating, yet all it means is “pianoforte” in German and refers to none other than what we think of as the modern piano. The sonata itself I find mesmerizing when I’m listening to it, somewhat baffling when it’s over.
For tickets and other concert information, call Camerata Pacifica at 805.884.8410 or click here to visit it online.
— 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.