Pianist Gilles Vonsattel Featured in Solo Recital for Camerata Pacifica's “Beethoven 32” Project at Music Academy of the West

Camerata Pacifica’s “Beethoven 32” initiative, which launched last season, begins its second year with a solo piano recital by Principal Piano Gilles Vonsattel devoted to three contrasting Beethoven piano sonatas. Performances are slated for Monday, December 7, 7:00 pm, at Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West, and Wednesday, December 9, 2026, 8:00 pm, at Zipper Hall in downtown Los Angeles. “Beethoven 32” is a momentous three-year Beethoven cycle featuring Vonsattel, “a pianist well worth watching” (The New York Times), perform all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas in a hybrid blend of solo recitals and chamber programs.

“Camerata Pacifica is thrilled to welcome Gilles Vonsattel back to our stage as he embarks on the second year of his epic ‘Beethoven 32’ journey, which has captivated audiences and critics alike,” says Camerata Pacifica Founder/Artistic Director Adrian Spence. “Gilles’ performances of Beethoven’s 32 celebrated piano sonatas – an incredibly demanding and challenging feat – offer an extraordinary exploration of emotion, transformation, artistic endurance, finesse, and virtuosity.”

Vonsattel opens the solo recital – the first of two this season – with Beethoven’s breezy and humorous Piano Sonata in G Major, Op. 31, No. 1, which includes a parody of Italian opera and introduced the distinctive “Beethovian” musical style that would appear in the composer’s later “mature” works.

Shifting to the dramatic, Vonsattel next interprets Piano Sonata in D Minor, Op. 31, No. 2, “The Tempest,” a tragic work composed during a particularly challenging time for Beethoven due to the progression of his hearing loss.

The program concludes with Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 31, No. 3, “The Hunt,” a charming, and playful work considered Beethoven’s brightest, most cheerful piano sonata.

Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel boasts remarkable versatility and artistic originality. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the 2016 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award, and top prizes in the Naumburg and Geneva competitions, he has graced prestigious stages worldwide, enthralling audiences with recitals and chamber performances, and collaborating with renowned orchestras including the Munich Philharmonic and the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphonies. As a champion of new music, he has premiered compositions by celebrated composers such as Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, Anthony Cheung, and George Benjamin. He is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program and has earned degrees from Columbia University and the Juilliard School. Today, Vonsattel shares his passion for music as a Professor of Piano at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Camerata Pacifica, a Southern California-based chamber music collective hailed for its exceptional artistry and compelling programming of legacy classics and daring new work, was named 2026 Ensemble of the Year by the national service organization Chamber Music America. Praised as “innovative and intrepid” (The Daily Telegraph), “visceral and powerful” (The Economist), the ensemble has a considerable commissioning portfolio that includes more than 20 works by such established and rising composers as John Harbison, Jake Heggie, Huang Ruo, Lera Auerbach, Bright Sheng, Ian Wilson, David Bruce, Libby Larsen, and John Luther Adams. Camerata Pacifica was founded in 1990 by Adrian Spence, who was named to Musical America’s prestigious list of Top 30 Professionals in Classical Music in January 2026.

For tickets ($85) and information, visit www.cameratapacifica.org.