Park City Institute partners with the Beethoven Festival for their first chamber concert of the year

Park City Institute and the Park City Beethoven Festival have compared musical notes and announced their first chamber music concert of 2022 will be on Sunday, Feb. 6, at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts.

The concert, scheduled tol start at 3 p.m., will feature pianist John Novacek, and include Beethoven’s Trio Op. 1 No. 1 for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, and Jean Francaix’s 1990 Trio of Clarinet, Viola and Piano, before wrapping with Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 110.

“It’s going to be a great performance that will include some great classical music, and a piece from the 20th century,” said Ari Ioannides, Park City Institute executive director. “So it’s going to be really neat.”

The concert will also feature Park City Beethoven Festival resident artists, violist Leslie Harlow and her husband, clarinetist Russell Harlow.

“We are thrilled to be performing with John Novacek for this performance,” said Leslie Harlow, Park City Beethoven Festival founder. “He presented the Beethoven Sonata in New York City not too long ago, and this will be his (Beethoven) Festival debut of the Beethoven Op. 1 No. 1 Piano Trio and the Francaix Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano.”

Harlow said the program is filled with “contrast and color, melody and a bit of madness.”

“The program begins with one of Beethoven’s earliest chamber works, the first of three trios originally written for piano, violin and cello,” she said. “Until these works Beethoven was known primarily as a phenomenal concert pianist and improvisor, and these trios served as his introduction to Viennese classical music society as a wonderful composer.”

The program will then lead into the Trio by Francaix.

“It is filled with virtuoso flair and has a mad, cabaret style,” Harlow said.

After a short intermission, Novacek will perform Beethoven’s 31st Piano Sonata, the second to last sonata the composer wrote, Harlow said.

“The Sonatas are considered by many to be the finest collection of the greatest piano solo masterpieces ever composed,” she said. “Glorious nature aside, (this) Sonata brings us back to Beethoven’s earliest, most human and intimate style.”

Novacek has recorded 35 CDs, and regularly tours the globe as a solo artist, chamber musician and concerto soloist, Harlow said.

“He has performed in over 30 concerts with dozens of orchestras,” she said.

The pianist has worked with notable and award-winning musicians such as violinists Joshua Bell and Leila Josefowicz, and cellists Matt Haimovitz and Yo-Yo Ma, as well as the St. Lawrence, SuperNova and Ying string quartets.

Novacek also tours widely as a member of the Intersection Music Trio, which includes violinist Laura Frautschi and cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper, Harlow said.

Ioannides said the Park City Beethoven Festival’s concerts adds artistic variety to the Park City Institute lineup.

“In the next couple of months we have Kenny Loggins, Stephanie Land, Dance Theatre of Harlem and these classical performances,” he said. “And these all really excite me like never before.”

Ioannides also enjoys working with the Beethoven Festival, because it, like the Park City institute, is a local nonprofit.

“We are trying to work with other local nonprofits more and more,” he said. “Last year we worked with Mountain Town Music to present a free concert, and I think you will see us work with other nonprofits in town.”

The partnership with the Beethoven Festival is a “no brainer,” Ioannides said.

“The Harlows do all the booking, and we provide the space and we do all the tech,” he said.

“The theater is the ideal place for this, because there is plenty of room, and it’s rarely used on Sundays. Plus, these are shows you can bring the whole family to, and still have time to get dinner afterward.”