Hear inventive treatments of popular themes and homages to great masters in this program. Bizet’s dramatic variations owe much to a classic set by Beethoven, but also contain a quote from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Liszt honored Beethoven with a transcription of his song An die ferne Geliebte, while Schumann’s Beethoven-worship finds its voice in his deeply personal Fantasy. Inspired, in part, by an effort to raise funds for a Beethoven monument, Schumann’s tribute is a first-movement allusion to An die ferne Geliebte.