The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) celebrates Valentine’s weekend with Passion + Mystery: Martín + Say + Beethoven, an evening of expressive music featuring Gabriel Fauré’s beautiful Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80, Grammy®-nominated composer Gernot Wolfgang’s Desert Wind, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, with acclaimed pianist and composer Fazıl Say as soloist, led by Music Director Jaime Martín. The concerts take place on Saturday, February 14, 2026, at 7:30 pm at Colburn’s Zipper Hall, 200 S. Grand Ave, Los Angeles, and on Sunday, February 15, 2026, at 4:00 pm at The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. Tickets ($49 & $79) are on sale on their website. BUY TICKETS HERE
Wolfgang served as a LACO Sounds Investment Composer during the 2006–07 season. In May 2006, LACO presented the world premiere of his commissioned work, Desert Wind, at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. Since the 2001–02 season, LACO’s Sound Investment community has brought together music lovers to support composers through crowdfunding and engagement with the creative process. This pioneering commissioning program offers participants a front-row seat to a work’s journey, from its initial conception to its world premiere.
Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande captures the delicate tensions of longing, love, and hidden desire. Inspired by symbolist Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck’s play of the same name, Fauré’s music evokes an atmosphere of intimate beauty and drama, weaving lyrical melodies and rich harmonies that explore the complexities of human emotion.
Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, his first in a minor key, opens with a powerful theme played by the orchestra, and unfolds with restraint before erupting in a dramatic, stormy concluding cadenza. The second movement offers a major-key contrast and lyrical exchange between piano and orchestra before the final movement, a spirited rondo in C minor softened by a tender A-major episode, closes in a burst of lyrical brightness.
Fazıl Say, “a pianist with a maverick reputation” (Gramophone) has been captivating audiences and critics around the world for over 25 years — in a way that is uniquely his own. A concert with Fazıl Say is never just a performance. It is more immediate, more open, more electrifying. In short: it speaks directly to the heart. Since the beginning of his career, he has performed with many renowned American and European orchestras and numerous leading conductors, building up a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach to Classical Romantic and contemporary music, including his own compositions for piano. He makes his LACO debut for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a work he recorded in 2014 to critical acclaim, praised as “no ordinary performance” and “spine-tingling” (Gramophone) and deemed “essential listening” by The Guardian.
