Beethoven & Friends @ Town Hall, The Sequel

You think you know someone. A fiery one-off German Romantic wunderkind. You've had beers with this guy. And then this Neefe dude pops up. As Byron Schenkman told the Town Hall audience:

During his first trip to Vienna, young Ludwig van Beethoven wrote home to Johann Gottlob Neefe in Bonn, "Should I ever become a great man, you too will have a share in my success." Neefe was Beethoven's teacher, mentor, and advocate for over a decade. He was probably the single strongest influence on Beethoven's development...and, how many of you have ever heard of him before?

Then Byron played one of Neefe's twelve keyboard sonatas, and there it was, that muscular, turbulent cascade of notes that's become Beethoven's signature. But then again, the evening's program demonstrated that there's much more to Beethoven than crashing chordal reefs. For the compare-and-contrast session, we heard some Haydn, some C.P.E. Bach (a flute solo), and Mozart's "Ah, vous dirais-je, maman" -- an insane amount of variations (prompted, we suspect, by a ferocious case of insomnia) on a theme the world knows as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

This chamber Beethoven -- Variations on an Austrian Folk Tune and Serenade in D, for piano and flute -- was perfectly at home in the earlier classical world, with its almost quantitatively expressive runs of notes, highly structured progressions. Badda badda bum bum badda badda, called the piano. Tootle tootle too too tootle tootle, replied the flute. Actually, we were thinking of how little things change: The 'Wig Remix, the Variations could be called today, another hot young talent pumping up a puff pop piece into a calling card.

For this Part II of Beethoven and Friends, Byron was joined by flutist Christina Jennings, an interesting collaborative choice, as she generally performs newer music. A professional, she avoided passing out during that Bach flute solo, a piece which can send amateurs spinning into walls.

NEXT UP: Part III, Return of the Cellist, brings Raman Ramakrishnan from the Daedalus Quartet, who was in Seattle last year for the Meany Hall International Series. The program includes sonatas by Beethoven and Mendelssohn plus Beethoven's variations on theme of Handel. That's May 8, $14 in advance/$15 at the door. Even if we hadn't made the first two, we'd be going to this one because we -- dammit! -- just can't say no to the cello.