By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Pianist David Palmer and violinist Rossitza Jekova-Goza can see the light.
After Saturday, the duo will be two-thirds through a project that has them performing all 10 of Ludwig van Beethoven's violin sonatas for Chamber Music Amarillo.
The evening begins with a pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Fibonacci Space, 3306 S.W. Sixth Ave. Tickets are $35 for adults and $10 for students. Call 806-236-3545.
Saturday's performance will feature four of Beethoven's sonatas — Nos. 2, 4, 8 and 5. The series began in April with Nos. 1, 6 and 9, and will conclude April 1 with Nos. 10, 3 and 7.
"His sonata repertoire for the violin goes a long way toward bridging the gap between the classical and romantic eras," Palmer said, "especially in terms of the writing style."
I asked Palmer earlier this year what the players have gotten out of performing the full cycle: "We've sweated a lot," Palmer joked.
"It's a great discovery for me," he continued, more seriously, "as your delving into the music, to begin to understand as you look at what's on the page and play what's on the page ... (that) he gives you all you need to be able to be successful. Anybody who plays the instruments can succeed if they really, really study the music."
World-renowned pianist Daniel Tong called “the most important body of work for violin and piano.”
“As with so many of the genres that he touched, Beethoven set the standard to which all other composes aspired for many years afterwards,” Tong wrote at BeethovenPlus.com, a website for his project of pairing the 10 sonatas with newly commissioned response pieces. “For a violin and piano duo, these works are central to everything we do.”
Jekova-Goza and Palmer also will perform portions of the concert and discuss the music, the composer and more for a Friday Night Family free concert at 7 p.m. Friday.
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/chipchandlerwriter on Facebook.
