Announcing The Beethoven Cycle: all ten violin sonatas, three nights in March

The Beethoven Cycle: an exciting new series. All ten violin sonatas, three evenings, one week in March.

The Beethoven Cycle
Steven Moeckel, violin · Nathan Arch, piano
Tuesday, March 9 · Wednesday, March 10 · Friday, March 12, 2027 · 7:00pm
Rincon Congregational Church · 122 N. Craycroft Rd.

This fall Steven Moeckel asked whether he could play all ten of Beethoven’s violin sonatas in March 2027, the month the world marks two hundred years since Beethoven’s death in Vienna. The board said yes within a week.

So the AFCM 79th season has a new chapter. The Beethoven Cycle is three evenings at Rincon Congregational Church with Steven, the former Tucson Symphony concertmaster, and pianist Nathan Arch, his partner in the July 2025 concert the Arizona Daily Star called “a masterclass in virtuosity.”

Steven has played the complete cycle three times. The last time he played it in Tucson, in 2009, people were turned away at the door.

Hear all three evenings and you have heard everything Beethoven wrote for violin and piano: fifteen years of Beethoven finding out what the form could hold, from the ease of the “Spring” to the fury of the “Kreutzer” to the quiet of the tenth.

Program

Evening I · Tuesday, March 9

Sonata No. 1 in D Major, Op. 12, No. 1
Sonata No. 10 in G Major, Op. 96
Comments on the evening’s sonatas, presented by Jay Rosenblatt
Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47, “Kreutzer”

Tickets for Evening I

Evening II · Wednesday, March 10

Sonata No. 2 in A Major, Op. 12, No. 2
Sonata No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 12, No. 3
Comments on the evening’s sonatas, presented by Jay Rosenblatt
Sonata No. 4 in A Minor, Op. 23
Sonata No. 8 in G Major, Op. 30, No. 3

Tickets for Evening II

Evening III · Friday, March 12

Sonata No. 5 in F Major, Op. 24, “Spring”
Sonata No. 6 in A Major, Op. 30, No. 1
Comments on the evening’s sonatas, presented by Jay Rosenblatt
Sonata No. 7 in C Minor, Op. 30, No. 2

Tickets for Evening III

The Evening

Music in the sanctuary, then a reception in the Fellowship Hall with light hors d’oeuvres and a Q&A with Steven and Nathan. Partway through each program, musicologist Jay Rosenblatt, a member of the AFCM Honorary Board and longtime member of the University of Arizona music faculty, presents comments on the evening’s sonatas.

Tickets

$50 per evening, $12 for students. The Cycle Pass, all three evenings for $120, saves $30 over three single tickets. You will find the Beethoven Cycle Pass on our Tickets page.

Steven Moeckel

Violinist Steven Moeckel was concertmaster of the Tucson Symphony from 2002 to 2008, then of the Phoenix Symphony and the Santa Fe Opera, and returned to the TSO as its 2025 artist in residence. A laureate of the Sibelius Competition and a graduate of the Salzburg Mozarteum and Indiana University, he sang as a boy soprano with the Vienna Boys Choir. With pianist Paula Fan he toured Europe and the Americas and performed the complete Beethoven cycle three times. Since 2020 he has been professor of violin at Northern Arizona University.

Nathan Arch

Pianist Nathan Arch is Collaborative Pianist, Senior at the Kitt School of Music at Northern Arizona University. A native of the Cayman Islands, he holds the Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees in collaborative piano from Arizona State University, where he studied with Andrew Campbell. He has been collaborative pianist at the Rocky Ridge Music Center in Colorado, coordinated the Saarburg and Vianden international music festivals in Germany and Luxembourg, and tours as half of the saxophone and piano duo ZelenArch. He made his AFCM debut with Steven Moeckel in July 2025.

Venue notes (Rincon Congregational Church)

Rincon Congregational U.C.C., 122 N. Craycroft Rd., Tucson, just north of Broadway. Parking is at the church.

The music is in the sanctuary. The reception, with light hors d’oeuvres and the Q&A, follows in the Fellowship Hall.

Please feel free to call for directions or tickets: 520-577-3769