Vim and Virtuosity

Aug 4, 11:50 PM

Violinist Arnaud Sussmann continues to spellbind festival audiences this week with his exhilirating performance of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. With Music@Menlo artistic co-director Wu Han at the piano, this imposing landmark of the Western canon set the stage Tuesday evening for the season’s second “Mendelssohn Perspectives” performance. Following the Kreutzer, Arnaud and Wu Han were joined by cellist and artistic director David Finckel for Pierre Jalbert’s haunting Piano Trio, composed in 1998.

Violinist Yehonatan Berick, making his festival debut this week in Brahms’s Opus 26 Piano Quartet, leads Wednesday’s master class, as the young artists of the Chamber Music Institute prepare the Schumann Piano Quintet and Mendelssohn Octet for this weekend’s Institute Performances. The evening’s offerings comprise music by Beethoven and Schumann at the Prelude Performance, courtesy of the International Program artists (6:00 p.m.), followed by the summer’s final performance of “Mendelssohn Perspectives” (8:00 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church).