To get the new year off to a great start, music lovers in the Napa Valley are invited to enjoy two performances featuring a Bay Area native, cellist Rebecca Rust, and her husband, bassoonist Friedrich Edelmann. Known as the Mozart Duo, they now reside in Germany and have been touring internationally.

The first performance is Sunday, Jan. 6 at  4 p.m. at the St. Helena Presbyterian Church,  where they will present a program of music for bassoon, cello and organ, including pieces by Cervetto, Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Kirchner, Gounoud, Klengel, Bruch and Francoeur.

The second performance is Sunday, Jan. 20 at 4 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church of Napa. This program  features compositions by de Fesch, Bach, Beethoven, Arenski, Mendelsohn, Bruch and Francoeur.

The performances are free and open to the public. A $10 donation may be made at the door.

The San Francisco Voice referred to them as a “perfect pairing” after a 2006 performance in Berkeley. The critic wrote they  “demonstrated that it doesn’t take an evening of masterworks to provide pleasure. In a judicious sampling of styles and periods, they offered an evening of music-making that was provocative, professional, and occasionally profound.”

The performances in St. Helena and in Napa will present an eclectic mix of music across three centuries, exploring the unusual sonorities of cello and bassoon. Musician Thomas Flesher will accompany them on a grand piano in Napa and on the famous Rieger Organ in St. Helena.

Rebecca Rust earned her degrees at New York with Bernard Greenhouse and at Cologne, Germany, with Paul Szabo and attended master classes with the late Mstislav Rostropovitch. She plays a 200 year old cello which Prince Charles used to own and play on. She and Edelman have performed in Europe, Japan, Israel — where the concerts were supported by the German Embassy Tel Aviv and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Berlin — and the U.S.

Friedrich Edelmann was principal bassoonist of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra for 27 years under Sergiu Celibidache and James Levine. As a student of Klaus Thunemann and Milan Turkovic, he has given master classes and lessons in the U.S., German, Israel and Japan.  German, Czech and Israeli composers have written compositions for him and his wife. Among his many CDs are “Marco Polo” with compositions by Villa Lobos with Emmanuel Pahud, and “Tudor” compositions by Mercadante with Aurele Nicolet. In late summer 2007 their latest CD recording of an all-Beethoven program will be released by Cavalli-Records.

Thomas Flesher, originally from Virginia, began organ studies as a teenager. He continued organ studies with William Watkins in Washington, DC. While earning his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg,  he studied with James S. Darling at Bruton Parish Church and served as organist for the Williamsburg Presbyterian Church, where he helped replace the church’s old pipe organ, an Austin instrument built in 1934, with a new Casavant tracker organ, similar in size and style to the Rieger instrument at First Presbyterian Church of St. Helena. Flesher is Organist at First Presbyterian Church of Napa.