Omni Now Streaming Recital by András Csáki

The Roman Catholic church in Pestújhely (photograph by VinceB, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

At noon this past Sunday the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts released the latest video in its Omni On Location series. The subtitle of this series is Music from Historical Sites, and the site for this performance is the Keresztelő Szent János-templom, a Roman Catholic church dedicated to Saint John in the Pestújhely suburb of Budapest. The video presents András Csáki’s performance of the Opus 17 sonata in A major by Franz Werthmüller.

Werthmüller was born a year before Ludwig van Beethoven and outlived both Beethoven and Schubert. His Opus 17 sonata has the sort of intimacy that one might expect from a Schubertiad. Csáki’s performance could not do a better job of serving that intimacy. He performs with a quiet and casual disposition that invites the attentive listener to relish not only the turns of phrase but also his capacity for negotiating tricky passages that superpose harmony and counterpoint.

This performance is now available for streaming through the Omni Foundation’s YouTube channel. The YouTube Web page for viewing has been available since this past Sunday at noon. There is no charge for admission, which means that these performances are made possible only by the viewers’ donations. A Web page has been created for processing contributions, and any visits made prior to the streaming itself will be most welcome.