Chamber Music Society to perform Haydn, Schubert, Beethoven

The Sacramento Chamber Music Society performs Saturday in Davis in a program that will feature guest performer Julie Hochman, cello, in the highly regarded Schubert String Quintet. Composed in summer 1828, it was the final piece of chamber music that the composer completed before his death later that year. (Schubert never got to hear the piece; the first performance came in 1850.)

The performance will be an unusual local opportunity to listen and compare, since the Alexander String Quartet and guest cellist Eugene Sor performed the Schubert String Quintet during a pair of January performances in the Mondavi Center’s Vanderhoef Studio Theatre. For many listeners, a “second hearing” of a famous piece, performed by a different line-up of musicians, yields insights into the music.

Hochman was born in Milwaukee, and she began playing the cello at age 9. She did her undergraduate work in Tennessee at what is now the University of Memphis, and her graduate studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. She married and settled in San Francisco with her family, then came to Davis in 1995 with two young children.

Before long, Hochman started giving private lessons in Davis and now has a busy studio with about 25 cello students, “ages 6 to 60-something,” she said. She is a member of the Sacramento Philharmonic.

Also on the Chamber Music Society’s program will be the “Sunrise” String Quartet by Josef Haydn, composed around 1796-97 as part of Haydn’s set of four quartets that make up his Opus 76. The “Sunrise” nickname stems from a rising theme in the opening movement.

The program also will feature one of the Beethoven String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95, known as the “Serioso,” which was first performed in 1814.

The Davis performance will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Congregation Bet Haverim, 1715 Anderson Road. The concert will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10, in Capistrano Hall on the Sacramento State campus. Tickets are $28 general, $22 for seniors and $12 students with ID, available at the door. For more information, visit www.cmssacto.org, call 916-443-2908 or email cmssacto@gmail.com.