Arizona Friends recital brings an old friend back to Tucson

It’s not like he’s a stranger, but whenever violinist Steven Moeckel comes “home” to Tucson, we feel a little tinge of nostalgia.

So does he.

“I love coming back to Tucson and I’m so glad that Tucson will still have me back as a performer,” he said last week while on a trip to the Oregon coast. “It’s always a joy.”

He was only Tucson Symphony Orchestra concertmaster a short time, six seasons from 2002-08, but there was something about that singular voice coming from the first chair in the orchestra that resonated.

It would be easy to say that our memory of him outlasted his Tucson tenure when Moeckel left in summer 2008 to take the concertmaster role with the Phoenix Symphony.

But he had barely been gone a few months when he was back on the Tucson Music Hall stage (it was rechristened the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall long after he left) playing Beethoven‘s Violin Concerto to open the 2008-09 season that September.

He’s been back a number of times since, guesting with Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra, St. Andrew’s Bach Society, True Concord Voices & Orchestra and the TSO, including making a surprise appearance last December as a guest concertmaster.

“Last year performing as concertmaster with the Tucson Symphony was such a homecoming,” he said.

He’ll have an encore homecoming on Wednesday, July 16, when he performs his first-ever recital with Arizona Friends of Chamber Music.

Moeckel, who lasted 13 seasons with Phoenix, comes here with pianist Nathan Arch, a colleague at Northern Arizona University where Moeckel has taught violin since 2020. The pair has done a couple of recitals over the years, including with Dove of Peace Lutheran Church’s concert series in April 2024.

Moeckel dubbed the upcoming recital “Virtuosity Through the Centuries,” with a program of works that showcase virtuosity from both instruments.

The concert opens with one of Beethoven’s earlier violin sonatas, the No. 2 in A major that Moeckel said is “very much in the style of Haydn.”

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“The virtuosity is more in the piano,” he said. “It’s absolutely charming and I’m really glad to find a home for it on this recital. It’s not done very often; it’s usually only done as part of the (sonata) cycle.”

The recital is bookended by Saint-Saëns’ Sonata No. 1 in D minor, which Moeckel described as “pure showoff” and “incredibly flashy.”

The writing in the final movement casts both instruments in perpetual movement to the point that the musicians and the audience “start grinning after awhile because it’s very fast and very flashy,” Moeckel said.

But Moeckel said he is most excited to perform Jennifer Higdon’s “String Poetic,” composed in 2006 for the Grammy-winning violinist Jennifer Koh.

Moeckel said that while “String Poetic” is a contemporary piece, “it is a piece that people will like.”

“I love to represent music especially of women composers who are living,” he said. “It’s such a cool journey; it’s a different perspective and a great way to show people what’s going on in the composition world, and Jennifer Higdon is certainly the leader of that.”

Moeckel and Arch will demonstrate some of the effects Higdon employed to create “an exciting and difficult” dialogue between the violin and piano.

“That’s what makes that piece so exciting to listen to,” he said.

Wednesday’s recital begins at 7 p.m. at Rincon Congregational United Church of Christ, 122 N. Craycroft Road.

Tickets are $45 for adults, $12 for students with ID, through arizonachambermusic.org.

Wednesday’s concert is part of Arizona Friends’ summer concert series.