Classical music not meant to be taken so seriously

We’re used to thinking of classical music as serious stuff, but that’s actually not an accurate picture.

Back in the early 19th century Vienna of Beethoven and Schubert, plenty of music took place in cafes and people’s houses. So the Early Music Studio’s next concert on April 9 at the Kelowna Forum focuses on the lighter music written by serious composers.

If any composer has a reputation for being irascible, it is Beethoven. But when he was young, he was a sociable prodigy who had many friends. Some of his earliest successful pieces were written for those in his circle to play in the informal atmosphere of the cafe. The concert will treat listeners to a menu of his rarely heard pieces for mandolin and piano.

The mandolin was a popular instrument at the time all over Europe, partly because it was small and portable, and its sound carried well in a crowd.

Beethoven’s “Sonatinas” are played on an instrument donated to the studio in nearly wrecked condition, but restored to life by luthier and fretted-instrument wizard Clive Titmuss.

In honour of the original owner of the mandolin, a ship’s engineer from Glasgow who plied the South China Seas and played it to pass the time, Titmuss and Susan Adams will play their arrangements of well-known Scottish folk songs.

Early keyboard specialist Adams plays one of Beethoven’s most popular pieces, The Tempest, and both players unearth some charming and nearly unknown duos for piano and guitar by Weber and Diabelli, the latter both Beethoven’s friend and publisher.

Adams plays a restored original 1809 Broadwood, almost identical to one Beethoven owned. Around 1812, some of Beethoven’s students living in London purchased an English-action grand from John Broadwood, and shipped it to the composer as a gift.

“Beethoven just loved his new piano, because it was so much more powerful and expressive than the smaller piano made in Vienna,” Adams said. Beethoven’s encroaching deafness had a role to play. “He could hear this piano better than his old one, so he was able to continue working on his music,” she said.

Period guitars and pianos work much better together than current versions of the instruments, said Titmuss. “When the two modern versions of these instruments play together, it’s not a happy marriage. The piano easily drowns the guitar out. But period instruments restore the balance and the instruments match so well, it is sometimes impossible to tell who played what.”

The Kelowna Forum is a renovated church on the edge of the urban core. The design of the building is perfect for intimate and informal music-making.

The show starts at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $22 and $20 for students and seniors at Kelowna Tickets Orchard Park, Annegret’s Chocolates Towne Centre Mall, Tourism Kelowna and brownpapertickets.com/event/2886660