Camerata Pacifica Presents 2 US Premieres at The Huntington

Camerata Pacifica spotlights the violin, horn, and piano in an engaging program featuring two U.S. premieres, both commissioned for Camerata Pacifica by Pasadena resident Judith Vida-Spence in memory of her late husband Stuart Spence, as well as violin works by Clara Schumann and Robert Schumann, April 22-27, 2025, at four Southern California locations.

Eminent horn player Ben Goldscheider is featured on both U.S. premieres, including Nibiru, by Zoë Martlew, whose “music rises to a plangent emotional peak” (Wall St Journal). Martlew calls Nibiru an “apocalyptic space drama for horn and electronics.” Premiered in June 2024, according to The Guardian, it “places the soloist at the center of a global apocalypse – the title comes from Babylonian mythology – with the horn pleading for humanity’s salvation, amid sounds drawn from a variety of cultures, and ending with the song of an extinct Hawaiian bird.”

The other U.S. premiere, Eeyore, for horn and piano by British composer Oliver Leith, features Goldscheider with Camerata Pacifica Principal Pianist Gilles Vonsattel, an “immensely talented” and “quietly powerful pianist” (The New York Times). Leith describes Eeyore as “tediously, comedically, joyfully sad. So resolute in sadness that it becomes a different thing. The horn, usually a coiled heroic tube billowing gold, here brays wobbled sad songs – one-note laments with tiny shimmering blemishes, emoting within a very limited band of notes, saying as much as donkey can. It’s a triumphantly sad duet between donkey and a piano.” Eeyore was premiered at St. Paul’s Hall at the UK’s University of Huddersfield in November 2024.

Violinist Grace Park, lauded for her “intensely wrought and burnished” sound” (Strings Magazine), performs Robert Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op 105. With Gilles Vonsattel, the duo also presents Clara Schumann’s Three Romances for Violin and Piano, Op 22.

Brahms’ Horn Trio in E Flat Major, Op. 40, featuring all three artists, caps the program.

The performances are Tuesday, April 22, 7:30 pm, at The Huntington’s Rothenberg Hall in San Marino; Thursday, April 24, 8:00 pm, at Zipper Hall in Downtown Los Angeles; Friday, April 25, 7:00 pm, at Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West; and Sunday, April 27, 3:00 pm, at Thousand Oaks’ Janet and Ray Scherr Forum.

For tickets ($75 at The Huntington, Music Academy of the West, and Zipper Hall; $91, including fees, at Janet and Ray Scherr Forum) and information, visit www.cameratapacifica.org.