ARCA's Memorial Concert: It’s Beethoven – Still Fresh After All These Years

Concert honoring the memory of Dr. Arthur and Patricia Steffee

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Principal Cellist, Anne Martindale Williams, performs with gold prize winning pianist David Allen Wehr.

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More than 250 years after his birth, Beethoven’s music still sounds fresh to long-time admirers and first-listeners alike because of his humanity. His music belongs to everyone because it conveys the complexity of mankind and the gamut of human emotion - from despair and death to a love of nature and gusto for life. Living in a turbulent revolutionary era, his music represents resistance against tyranny and defense of individual freedom, as in his “All people become brothers” from the Ninth Symphony’s “Ode to Joy.” Continuing to write masterpieces in defiance of his deafness, Beethoven became a universal symbol of hope.

In an afternoon of his music in Foxburg’s Lincoln Hall on Sunday, May 4 at 2 PM, gold prize winning pianist David Allen Wehr and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Principal Cellist, Anne Martindale Williams will perform masterpieces that embrace the full emotional range of his writing. This is ARCA’s FOUNDERS’ CONCERT honoring the memory of its founding President and Secretary/Treasurer, Dr. Arthur and Patricia Steffee, respectively.

The concert will include Beethoven’s Patheìtique Sonata - a work of passion and power – and Pastoral sonata, ideally programmed for a spring day on the Allegheny in Foxburg. The Sonata for Piano and Cello, Opus 69, explores extremes of range and emotion as a showpiece for both instruments, with cello and piano as equal partners. A perfect choice after the Holy Season is his Variations on Hail, the Conquering Hero Comes,” from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus for cello and piano; the theme of the variations is the Easter hymn “Thine Be the Glory.”

Tickets: Adults $25, ARCA Members $20, Students are FREE with parents receiving the Members’ price. Buy online at alleghenyriverstone .org or call 724-659-3153 to reserve and pay with cash or check at the door. Walk-ins are welcome!

After the concert, plan to meet the artists at a wine and cheese reception in the Red Brick Gallery from 4 to 6 PM for the first exhibit of the 2025 RBG season, “The Vandalia in Me” featuring photography and poetry of Greg Clary.

A favorite of ARCA audiences, David Allen Wehr’s international career was launched when he won the Gold Medal at the 1987 Santander International Piano Competition in Spain. The resulting tours have taken him to over 30 countries in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, including performances in the musical capitals of the world.

It was David’s thirteen seasons touring the US and Canada for Community Concerts as soloist and in chamber music partnerships that honed his unique ability to make great works of music accessible to the public.  As a “Living Program Note”, David Allen Wehr’s warm personality invites the audience into the emotion of the music and his rich program commentary makes simple the intricacies of great works of master composers.

In recent years in Lincoln Hall, David has solo Chopin, two piano Rachmaninoff piano suites with Cynthia Raim, and chamber music featuring performers from his “Music on the Bluff” series at Duquesne University where he is Dean of the Mary Pappert School of Music. David’s Rachmaninoff performance with Raim in the Memorial Concert for Arthur Steffee was a moving tribute to ARCA’s founder and president.

Anne Martindale Williams has enjoyed a successful career as principal cellist of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra since 1979. Throughout her tenure with the orchestra, she often has been featured as a concerto soloist both in Pittsburgh and on tour in New York at Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall.

She has collaborated with guest artists such as Yehudi Menuhin, André Previn, the Emerson Quartet, Lynn Harrell, Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham and Pinchas Zukerman in chamber music and made her London solo debut performing Dvoøák’s Cello Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic, Andre Previn conducting.

Williams divides her time between the orchestra, teaching at Carnegie Mellon University, and solo and chamber music performances in America, Europe and the Far East. She has appeared in several nationally televised productions including Concertos, produced by the BBC and Previn and the Pittsburgh, produced by WQED.

She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Orlando Cole. Her Tecchler cello was made in Rome in 1701.