When history is about to be made, you need to get your ticket early.
That's what dozens of people learned from Tuesday's opening concert of the St. Andrew's Bach Society Beethoven Project — the first time anyone in Tucson has set about to perform a composer's complete cycle of works in one series.
Folks were turned away at the door. Every seat in Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church — which can seat just over 400 — was filled. The benches were packed so tightly that strangers made temporary friends by virtue of nearly sitting on one another's laps. (If you don't already have tickets to the remaining concerts in the series, at 7 p.m. today and 3 p.m. Sunday, you might be out of luck; very few seats remain and you can't reserve them in advance.)
"Beethoven & the Journey to Romanticism: The 10 Violin Sonatas," with pianist Paula Fan and violinist Steven Moeckel, is a mammoth undertaking, covering the complete Beethoven violin sonata cycle. Tuesday night's opening performance was nothing shy of inspired.
Fan and Moeckel have been longtime duet and recording partners. They are intimately in tune to each other musically. When they perform, there's a delicious chemistry that puts the audience alternately at ease and on edge. You feel the bond, and yet you sit there awestruck in anticipation of witnessing — and not wanting to miss — their every nuance.
Tuesday's program gave us the beginning and ending of Beethoven's violin sonata writing. It started with the No. 1 in D major, followed up by No. 10 in G major. The concert's finale was Beethoven's tour de force, the Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, "Kreutzer."
Beethoven wrote the No. 1 while he was in his late 20s and filled with ambition and potential. It follows the Classical norms of the day — elegant and fairly predictable in its formula. But it hints to his eventual upending of the Classical form. In between beautifully composed passages, there are muted bombastic phrases.
The appeal of the piece lies in its conversation between the piano and the violin. The piano establishes its voice in the beginning, then gives over to the violin before both are joined in one voice. This allowed us to see more from Fan, who often takes the role of accompanist to Moeckel. In the First Sonata, she was a key player, bringing out Beethoven's bombastic spurts with delicate restraint. She never let the music's sense of urgency distract her from its overriding jovial tone. Her playing was crisp and never uptight.
Her role in the No. 10 was no less demanding. Beethoven composed No. 10 while in his early 40s, when his deafness was frustrating him. The underlying angst is always on the verge of taking over, but it never does. Instead, Beethoven throws out complex trills, varying tempos in the same passage and mixed emotions — playfulness quickly tempered by an underlying somber tone — all of which Fan conveyed with studious concentration.
Throughout the 10th, Moeckel reminded us of how much we have missed him since he left the Tucson Symphony Orchestra last year for the Phoenix Symphony. His performance of the second movement was inspired — technically faultless, charismatic yet not flashy and yielding an immensely rich, controlled sonority. Every once in a while, he would close his eyes and sway his 6-foot-plus frame in time to the softly lush melody as dove mobiles hanging from Grace St. Paul's ceiling swayed. It was almost as if the plastic white doves were flying in time to the music.
Moeckel would open his eyes, quickly scan his score then gently close them, never losing his place. It was in sharp contrast to his steeled, undivided attention to the score during the "Kreutzer." The piece demands it; it's a monster work for violin, so complex that its namesake, French violinist Rudolphe Kreutzer, refused to play it.
The violin's role is unrelenting in the first movement. There was no room for pauses, no time for Moeckel to blink away from his music stand. It was so intense that audience members couldn't take their eyes off him. When he finished, there was a collective exhale from the audience as Moeckel plucked a few shredded hairs from his bow.
The "Kreutzer" was the perfect vehicle to showcase Fan and Moeckel's musical oneness. The third movement is a rumble of frenzied passages that place equal demands on the both voices. If either is off, the piece splinters.
When they are as one, as Moeckel and Fan were Tuesday night, the result is historic.
Review
The first concert of the St. Andrew's Bach Society's "Beethoven & the Journey to Romanticism: The 10 Violin Sonatas," with Paula Fan and Steven Moeckel, Tuesday at Grace St. Paul's Episcopal Church. The series continues at 7 tonight and 3 p.m. Sunday. Very few tickets remain. Available at the door.
