Cellist Alexander Russakovsky and pianist Amber Shay Nicholson, presented three sonatas written at different stages of Beethoven’s career. The works illustrate the composer’s growth over the years of his all-too-short life; he died at 56 in 1827.
The program consisted of Beethoven’s three sonatas for piano and cello, in G minor, Op. 5, No. 2, in C Major, Op. 201, No. 1, and in D Major, Op. 102, No. 2. The first was written in 1796, when Beethoven was a young man and relatively free of difficulties in his life. The latter two were composed in 1815, at what the program notes called “the threshold of Beethoven’s last period.”
Consequently, the first sonata is relatively simple in comparison to the following works. However, it is still filled with musical adventure. The first, andante, movement is almost serene at the beginning. The second and concluding one is fiery, culminating in a dramatic allegro vivace.

Following intermission, Russakovsky and Nicholson took on the two later sonatas. Both pieces give voice to the composer’s increasingly stormy life. He was fated never to wed, though he seriously contemplated marriage on at least two occasions. His progressive deafness was also well underway when he began these sonatas in 1815.
Considering the magnitude of Beethoven’s music, and his life, musicians of the caliber of these are required. Fortunately, this cellist and this pianist are endowed with the technical skills and the emotional depths to do justice to the works.
Russakovsky is a member of the University of Southern Mississippi music faculty, and studied for his doctorate with Santa Barbara Symphony’s own principal cellist, Geoffrey Rutkowsky. Among his many laurels are appearances with the Jerusalem Academy String Quartet in Israel, of which he is a founding member, and at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.
Nicholson received a doctorate in piano performance from the Eastman School of Music and teaches keyboard music at the University of Southern Mississippi. While at Eastman, she studied with Nelita True and served as her studio assistant.