Monica Chew Plays A Little Light Beethoven

Monica will be playing Beethoven's magnum opus for piano, the op. 120 Diabelli variations. In 1819 composer Antonin Diabelli wrote a rather mundane waltz and invited all of the important composers (including Schubert, Hummel, and even Liszt!) to write variations on it, with the intention of fundraising for survivors of the Napoleonic Wars. In typical fashion, Beethoven went way overboard, writing 33 variations in a period of 4 years that transmogrify Diabelli's banal source material into something transcendent and divine. Also on the program are Beethoven's last sonata, op. 111, and the op. 126 Bagatelles.

Monica Chew at the Maybeck

Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 3:00pm

This concert is $20 General Admission/$10 Students 

Seating is limited.  To make a reservation, please email us at tix@maybeckstudio.org - please note the concert you would like to attend and how many seats you would like to reserve. 

Monica Chew is a San Francisco Bay Area pianist. Born in Florida, she spent her first 20 years in North Carolina. She made her solo debut with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra at age 13. After receiving her Master of Music from SF Conservatory of Music and a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley, she neglected piano for nearly a decade to work as a principal software engineer on security and privacy at Mozilla and Google until 2015. She loves playing chamber music and founded ensembles Duo Moderna and Minsky Duo in 2016. She lives in Oakland with her husband, an 1899 Steinway B, a clavichord, an otamatone, and a disused violin. She recently released her first album, Tender and Strange, featuring works by Bartók, Janáček, Messiaen, Takemitsu, and Scriabin.