Stephanie Chase has created string orchestra versions of virtuoso violin music by Sarasate, which have been recorded on the MSR Classics label in live-concert performances by The American String Project and performed by the Perlman Music Program. Her arrangements of music by Falla and Paganini have been called "the treat of the night" (www.gatheringnote.org) and "brilliant" (Seattle Times).

This concert features her string quintet arrangements of Manuel de Falla's sumptuous Siete Canciones Populares - arranged from the original version for voice and piano - followed by the brilliantly evocative Caprice Basque, Romanza Andaluza and Ziguenerweisen by Pablo de Sarasate, and the world premiere of the Sonata No. 3, Op. 108 for Violin and Piano by Johannes Brahms. For dessert, the program concludes with A Capricious CHASE - her version of Paganini's famed Caprice No. 24, in which she has inserted the musical spelling of her own name.

Through much of its history, Vienna has served as a music capitol - the Vienna Boys' Choir dates back to 1498! - and home to many of classical music's most influential and innovative composers. This concert is a journey through the music of six composers with pivotal ties to this city, starting in the mid-20th century and ending in the 1770's.

Our listening tour begins with the Sonata No. 2 for Violin Solo, Op. 115 by Ernst Krenek, which he composed in 1948 shortly after moving to the United States. A student of Franz Shreker - first in Vienna and then in Berlin - Krenek was later influenced by the music of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg, and after about 1933 he composed principally in the 12-tone system. We then travel back a few decades to 1910, where we encounter both the Caprice Viennois by Fritz Kreisler and Four Pieces for violin and piano, Op. 7 by Anton Webern.

Composed a mere sixteen years earlier (1894), the majestic Clarinet Sonata, Op. 120 by Johannes Brahms forms the heart of the concert, followed by the mercurial Klavierstucke No. 1 (D 946) by Franz Schubert, which dates from 1828. The journey then ends with the delightful Sonata in A Major, K. 305 for piano and violin, composed in 1778 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Many enduring works of music have been inspired by a great love. Following his death in 1827, among Beethoven's possessions were letters written to an unidentified woman, including this excerpt:

"Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us - I can live only wholly with you or not at all."

Many scholars have speculated that these letters date from the summer of 1812, when he wrote the brief Piano Trio (WoO 39). This work is dedicated to Maximiliane Brentano, the daughter of Antoine Brentano, and was given to her by Beethoven personally on June 26, 1812. Although there is significant conjecture as to the identity of the "Immortal Beloved," her mother is considered a prime candidate.

American song composer Tom Cipullo (b. 1960) is a recipient of the Aaron Copland Award and winner of the American Art Song Competition for Composers. His song cycle Late Summer was written in 2001 and uses beautiful texts by William Heyen ("Crickets"), Emily Dickinson ("...Summer into Autumn Slips") and Stanley Kunitz ("Touch Me"). The program's first half concludes with the powerful Race for the Sky by noted American song composer Richard Pearson Thomas (b. 1957), whose work for soprano, violin and piano uses texts left in public memorials - including the Grand Central Train Station - following the World Trade Center disaster on September 11, 2001.

In 1853, twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms was introduced to Robert Schumann, who enthusiastically hailed his talent in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and became, with his wife Clara, an important mentor and friend. Brahms' Trio in B Major (Opus 8) dates from 1854, when Schumann's suicide attempt led to his being committed to a mental sanitarium, followed by his death two years later. Virtually from their first meeting Brahms and Clara enjoyed a mutually impassioned relationship - which may have remained platonic throughout their lives - that is memorialized in this Trio through its allusions to Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, which she was practicing and performing at the time of its composition. In revisiting this work some twenty years later, Brahms elected to make substantial revisions to its form, which is the version performed in this concert.