Seating is limited. Registration is recommended. Walk-ins are also welcome. 

Join us for an afternoon of classical music history followed by a brief string quartet performance. In this presentation, Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies director, Dr. Erica Buurman, will discuss some of the collection’s highlights, including its rare manuscripts and early printed materials. The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University is an archive and museum devoted to Ludwig van Beethoven, and is the largest collection of Beethoven-related materials outside the composer’s hometown of Bonn, Germany.

This event will include a live performance of a rarity from the center’s collection: Beethoven’s popular “Spring” Sonata for violin and piano, op. 24, in an arrangement for string quartet from ca. 1829. The sonata will be performed by Erica Buurman and Ben Bregman (violins), Bill Palmer (viola) and Victor Ha (cello). 

Erica Buurman is Director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies and Associate Professor in the School of Music at San José State University. Her publications include chapters in the Cambridge Companion to the Eroica Symphony and the forthcoming Beethoven in Context, and a monograph, The Viennese Ballroom in the Age of Beethoven (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

This event is generously sponsored by the Friends of the Mountain View Library.