Trinity Alps Musicians to Play Beethoven “Extremes”

Musicians preparing for a performance in the Trinity Alps (from the home page for the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival)

Once again Ian Scarfe, founder and Director of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, has arranged for Festival musicians to give a concert in San Francisco. This will be the latest installment in the Midwinter Classics series. The performance in San Francisco will be preceded by three in Trinity Alps (January 3 in Hyampom, January 4 in Weaverville, and January 5 in Eureka) and one in Palo Alto. In 2020 the San Francisco performance will be a groupmuse concert at Monument, and the title of the program will be Beethoven’s Last Words.

The program will feature the last major work that Ludwig van Beethoven completed, his Opus 135 string quartet in F major. The Trinity performers will be violinists Ellen McGehee and James Keene, violist Stephen Fine, and cellist Charles Akert. In addition Scarfe will play the slightly earlier Opus 126 collection of six bagatelles for solo piano. The program will begin with the pendulum swinging to early in Beethoven’s life with Scarfe playing the first of the three Opus 2 piano sonatas, written in the key of F minor. For the conclusion of the program, the string quartet will join Scarfe to present Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 414 piano concerto in A major.

This groupmuse concert will take place at Monument, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 11. Monument is located in SoMa at 140 9th Street, and the host will be Daisy Stanton. Admission will require a $10 minimum donation for the performers and a $3 registration fee. Specifics are maintained on the groupmuse Web page through which reservations must be made. Since this is a “living room groupmuse,” reservations are also necessary to determine how much carpet space will be required.