CSMA Presents The Complete Piano Sonatas of Beethoven

Community School of Music and Arts Presents

The Complete Piano Sonatas of Beethoven, Part I

Performed by Axel Schmitt, August 26

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – The Community School of Music and Arts (CSMA) in Mountain View presents The Complete Piano Sonatas of Beethoven, Part I performed by Axel Schmitt on Saturday, August 26 at 7:30pm. The performance will be held in Tateuchi Hall at the Community School of Music and Arts, located at 230 San Antonio Circle in Mountain View. This concert is free and open to the public. Seating is limited; please arrive early. Doors open at 7:00pm.

In this concert, pianist Axel Schmitt begins the herculean task of performing the complete piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven (32 in total). This is the first in a series of concerts leading up to the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2020. Beethoven wrote his 32 piano sonatas between 1795 and 1822. As a set, they are known to comprise one of the most important collections of works in the history of music, and the first cycle of major piano pieces suited to concert hall performance. 

Axel Schmitt has performed as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber-musician throughout the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Hungary, and Russia. Press reviews describe him as “a great pianistic talent” of an “amazing artistic range with a singing sound quality, tasteful power, noblesse, and calmness.” He is an “artist of mature, extremely rich ability of expression” who possesses “virtuosity, temperament, but also a great sense of melody and poetry.”

Born in Germany, Schmitt received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance as a student of the renowned Russian pianist Vitaly Margulis at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004. He also earned a Master of Music from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001, and a Bachelor of Arts from University of California, Los Angeles in 1999. He has won numerous competitions including the Los Angeles Liszt Competition, the national German competition Jugend musiziert, and the UCLA Concerto Competition. In 2007, the United States government declared him an artist of extraordinary ability and granted him permanent residency. He has been a part of the CSMA faculty since 2010. 

This event is part of CSMA’s 2017-2018 Community Concert Series. CSMA, a non-profit center for arts education, provides unique music and visual arts programming and events for audiences of all ages and backgrounds. In keeping with CSMA’s mission to engage the community with Arts4All, all Community Concerts are free and open to the public. The Community Concert Series is supported by generous grants from the Applied Materials Foundation and the Los Altos Community Foundation. The official media sponsor for the series is Classical KDFC radio.

For a full Community Concert Series schedule, visit www.arts4all.org. For artist interviews and hi-res images, please contact Sharon Kenney, Director of Marketing & Communications, at 650-917-6800, ext. 305 or skenney@arts4all.org.