While a Baroque concert might be overlooked by many patrons of
popular music, such a rarity still exists ““ thanks to
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Luigi Boccherini and master cellist and
UCLA Professor Elisabeth Le Guin.
Le Guin will perform this weekend with Musica Angelica, one of
Southern California’s premier Baroque orchestra since its
formation in 1993.
The orchestra is one of many groups staging classical music
events this year which incorporate works of Mozart, in celebration
of the composer’s 250th birthday.
Conductor Martin Haselböck heads the orchestra, which will
feature solo performances by flutist Stephen Schultz and Le Guin,
who are both renowned Baroque musicians.
Le Guin, an associate professor of musicology and director of
undergraduate studies at UCLA, will perform as a soloist for the
Boccherini piece.
“Boccherini is in many ways my favorite composer. Any time
his music gets programmed I’m jazzed,” she said.
As a musicologist, Le Guin has extensively researched and
studied Boccherini’s works and published writings about him.
And while her research extends into New Age and the music of
18th-century Spain, Baroque is her specialty.
“The piece I’m playing has gotten quite famous, but
it doesn’t have a lot of Boccherini’s original
handiwork,” Le Guin said.
“But I am playing it in the original version. It’s a
great piece. It has a strange sense of humor. There are sections
where the notes go so high for the cello that they’re just
squeaky ““ there’s no way they can sound good ““ so
what’s he doing? I think his act is comic. He’s trying
to get the audience to smile.”
Musically trained in modern cello at a conservatory in San
Francisco, Le Guin spent her youth freelancing as an orchestral
cellist for 12 years. Following that, she earned a doctorate in
historical musicology at UC Berkeley.
Throughout her career, Boccherini and Baroque music always
managed to stay in the picture.
“In my early 30s I was looking around, the way you do when
you’re 30, thinking, “˜This freelance thing isn’t
going to be so fun when I’m 60,'” Le Guin
said.
“I needed something that will give me security. So really
the specialty as a player came first, and later I moved into
musicology. Naturally enough, my interest as a musicologist tended
to fall over repertory I already knew as a child. That’s why
I’ve written and published a lot about Boccherini.”
Le Guin has also performed with the Artaria String Quartet,
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Trio Galatea and currently is part
of Foundling, an all-female string group that functions as a
nonprofit charity for public awareness of issues affecting women
and children.
“The advocacy is really nice because when you dedicate a
lot (to) classical music like I do, it can feel like you’re
out of step with the world. This makes some direct contribution to
that big old world out there,” Le Guin said.
While she finds performing in smaller and charity-driven
ensembles more gratifying, Le Guin said they’re more
difficult to come by because of finances.
The sheer rarity and accessibility of Musica Angelica seems to
be one of many driving forces of the orchestra, and it also allows
Le Guin to play the music she knows best.
“They play the kind of music I’m an expert in, and
I’m friends with many people of the orchestra that have been
in gigs I used to do,” Le Guin said. “It’s the
only show of its kind in town.”
The orchestra will perform tonight in the Zipper Concert Hall
and at the Westwood United Methodist Church on Sunday.
The program features Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Symphony
No. 8 in G, “˜Le Soir,'” Mozart’s
“Flute Concerto No. 2 in D, K. 314″ and “Symphony
No. 29 in A, K. 201,” and Boccherini’s “Cello
Concerto in B flat, G. 482.”