Duofest Finale, Eclectic Flute/Percussion at Glendale Noon Concerts Await

DuoFest, the Boston Court’s summer music festival produced in conjunction with the composer collective Synchromy, continues this week with performances by Panic Duo (violinist Pasha Tseitlin and pianist Nic Gerpe), as well as husband and wife team, soprano Justine Aronson and pianist Richard Valitutto.

Today, Thursday, July 13 they all will be performing a program with “Hopscotch Tarot” by Veronika Krausas as its centerpiece. Also included on the program will be works by Nicholas Deyoe, Isaac Schenkler, Anne LeBaron and Vera Ivanova.

The festival concludes on Saturday, July 15 with a quirky tribute to Beethoven featuring Mauricio Kagel’s rarely performed and screened “Ludwig van.” The 1969 musical film was commissioned by West German Radio for the elder composer’s bicentennial celebrations. By turns sardonic and sinister, it illustrates a point once put forward by Theodor W. Adorno that the composer’s “Symphony No. 9” had become so famous and had subsequently been appropriated by a panoply of divergent and often contradictory ideological interests that the work had, in effect, been interpreted out of existence. Kagel’s “Ludwig van” takes it further, arguing that is has not been merely a single work, but the entirety of Beethoven, the human being, that was buried, rendered unrecognizable. In Kagel’s view, Beethoven has been obliterated, his life and work now so much tchotchkes to be bought and sold.

Other composers on Saturday’s program include John Corigliano, Clarence Barlow, Erik Carlson and Beethoven.

All DuoFest performances will take place at Boston Court (70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena) and will begin at 8 p.m. General admission is $30. Seniors and students are $25 and $20 respectively. To obtain tickets and more information, please go online to http://www.bostoncourt.com/music-at-boston-court or call (626) 683-6883.

Those concerts are followed up by a Glendale Noon Concerts program on Wednesday, July 19 consisting of works for flute and percussion.

Flautist Katherine Marsh and percussionist Timm Boatman will perform music by Katherine Hoover, Dwight Dixon, Peyton MacDonald and Peter Maxwell Davies.

As with all Glendale Noon Concerts, it will take place in the sanctuary of the Glendale City Church (610 E. California Ave., Glendale) and admission is free to the public.

For details, visit http://glendalenoonconcerts.blogspot.com/ or call (818) 244-7241.

  Nestor CASTIGLIONE