Beethoven Sonatas Presented With Polish and Passion

We think of sonata writing as a formalistic procedure, but it would be hard to deduce the rules from the five sonatas that Beethoven composed for cello and piano over a 20-year period. For the opening of the South Bay Chamber Music Society’s season, cellist Ronald Leonard and pianist Kevin Fitz-Gerald played all five, plus the three large sets of variations, spread over two concerts, starting Friday evening at Los Angeles Harbor College and ending Sunday afternoon at Pacific Unitarian Church in Rancho Palos Verdes.

The Friday performance began with Opus 5, No. 2 in G minor, a restless, nonconformist work remarkable for 1796--or any other year. An appreciation for the drama of disruption and the eloquence of silence were quickly apparent in Leonard’s interpretation. He also brought to the task the warmth of tone and expression familiar from his 24 years as principal cellist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

A good dialogue is not a matter of unanimous echo, but of challenge and elaboration. A faculty colleague of Leonard’s at USC, Fitz-Gerald played with equal point and commitment, asserting his own ideas as well as complementing the cellist. Transparent textures reflected his clarity of thought and immediacy of feeling, supported by comprehensive technical resources.

After intermission it was the visionary pair of Opus 102 sonatas. No. 1 in C presents severe obstacles to continuity, and here Leonard and Fitz-Gerald did sound uncertain at times, negotiating the composer’s gapped phrases and oblique transitional twists like awed explorers. No. 2 in D, however, was all patrician grace and power, confident enough for understated gentleness in the aching slow movement and exuberant logic in the finale.

Beethoven’s first set of variations on a theme from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”--contemporary with the Opus 5 sonatas although numbered Opus 66-- completed the Friday installment for an enthusiastic, standing-room-only crowd. Leonard and Fitz-Gerald gave them fully embodied character, rich in detail but uncluttered in sweep and perspective.