American Double to Perform Famous Sonatas

American Double, a duo featuring violinist Philip Ficsor and pianist Constantine Finehouse, will perform Beethoven’s sonatas at a free, public concert Friday, Jan. 18, at 7 p.m. in Westmont’s Deane Chapel.

Ficsor, who joined the Westmont faculty in the fall of 2006, will open the concert with Bach’s Sonata in G minor for Solo Violin. Bach, who wrote three sonatas and three partitas for solo violin, completely revolutionized violin playing. “To this day, these six works are revered as the pinnacle of both violin technique and musical expression,” Ficsor says. “These pieces nearly break the seams of what is possible on the solo violin, and the effect is breath-taking.”

Finehouse, an artist-in-residence at Westmont, will perform solo selections by Scriabin and Schumann.

Ficsor and Finehouse will join forces to close the program with Beethoven’s powerful Sonata in C minor, Op. 30, no. 3. “Perhaps the most musically complete of all the violin sonatas Beethoven penned, his seventh sonata spans the emotional gamut from tender to tumultuous and everywhere in between,” Ficsor says.