A Valentine’s program where voice and strings share equal billing.

• This concert is built like a true chamber collaboration: a featured singer with the Arizona Philharmonic String Quartet, with guest violinist Steven Moeckel. That setup lets you hear the voice in the same intimate “conversation” as the strings, rather than in front of a full orchestra. The concert makes quick stylistic turns between pieces all having a connection to love, from opera to art song to chamber music.

Carmen in two bold snapshots: the Habanera and the Seguidilla.

• Bizet gives Carmen two early scenes that define her character through dance rhythms. The Habanera moves with a steady, hypnotic pulse that came to Europe from Afro-Cuban dance traditions. The Seguidilla is quicker and more teasing, and it’s explicitly a persuasion scene. Hearing them back-to-back lets you compare how rhythm can function as drama.

Mendelssohn’s Op. 13: a string quartet built from a love-song question.

• Mendelssohn anchors this quartet to his own earlier song “Frage” (“Ist es wahr?” or “Is it true?”). The opening gestures and recurring motto keep returning across all four movements, so the piece feels like one continuous thought rather than four separate episodes. It’s also an 18-year-old composer writing at full intensity, with Beethoven clearly in the room.

Burleigh’s Passionale and the early 20th-century Black art-song tradition.

• Harry T. Burleigh is often discussed for his role in bringing spirituals into concert life, and he also wrote a large body of art songs. Passionale sets James Weldon Johnson’s poetry in a direct, lyrical style that rewards close listening to text and phrasing. Placing Burleigh in this program also fits the “Voices of America” season frame in a concrete way: an American composer writing concert song at a high level.

French mélodie beside German Lied: two different ways of marrying poetry to music.

• Fauré and Strauss are near-contemporaries, and their song styles are distinct. French mélodie often prizes clarity of line and color in the piano texture, while German Lied can lean into darker harmonic turns and a more overt sense of narrative in the accompaniment. Putting these side by side sharpens your ear for how each tradition treats language, vowel color, and cadence.

A Mexican bolero that crossed into American popular song.

• Armando Manzanero’s “Somos Novios” is a classic bolero: intimate tempo, long melodic arcs, and harmony that gently tilts between warmth and ache. In English it became “It’s Impossible,” recorded by major American pop artists. In a chamber setting, the song’s craft becomes obvious: the melody carries, and the accompaniment can be delicate without losing momentum.

A living Prescott-area composer in the middle of the program.

• Mathew Lanning’s Hoedown brings a different kind of American voice into the mix: present-day, rhythmic, and rooted in old-American dance energy. Mat Lanning grew up in Prescott Valley and was an active participant in the Prescott-area art scene before he went to University of Arizona to pursue composition. He is now finishing is doctorate in composition at the New England Conservatory. While Lanning had five (count them!) orchestral premieres by Prescott-area orchestras during his high school years, and Arizona Philharmonic has commissioned arrangements from Lanning for past concerts, this is the first time Arizona Philharmonic has presented a new work composed by him.

Dvořák’s Cypřiše: love songs reimagined for string quartet, with a twist.

• The original Cypřiše is a set of 18 love songs for voice and piano. Dvořák later arranged 12 of them for string quartet, effectively turning vocal lyricism into chamber music. This concert uses Hans-Peter Dott’s arrangement drawn from the original song set, and the selections you’re hearing are not the same ones Dvořák chose for his own 12-piece quartet suite. That makes these pieces feel like “alternate chapters” in the same story.