Sunday's NOVA Chamber Music Series concert focuses on composers based in Vienna around the turn of the last century.

It features works by Johannes Brahms, Alban Berg and Anton Webern — composers whom local concertgoers don't normally see together on the same program, and, in the case of Berg and Webern, composers whose music is almost never performed here.

"I wanted a concert of Viennese composers, and I wanted to draw a connection between different generations and schools of thought," said series artistic director Jason Hardink.

The program at today's matinee concert consists of Brahms' Piano Quartet in C minor, op. 60, and the "Four Serious Songs," op. 121; Berg's "Seven Early Songs"; and Webern's "Five Movements for String Quartet."

"I thought it would be a great idea to juxtapose Brahms with the early works of Berg and Webern," Hardink said.

Performing today will be violinists David Porter and Stephanie Cathcart, violist Julie Edwards, cellist Walter Haman, pianists Jason Hardink and Vedrana Subotic, and singers Kirsten Gunlogson and Michael Chipman.

Most people don't realize that Brahms' late works are only separated by about a decade from the earliest compositions of Berg and Webern. "Brahms wrote (the op. 121) songs in 1896, and Webern's 'Five Movements' is from 1909, and written when he was a student of Schoenberg's," Hardink said. "They're worlds apart, but I thought it was a gem of an idea putting them together."

While stylistically they have nothing in common, there nevertheless is an emotional thread between the Brahms songs and the Webern pieces for quartet, Hardink said.

"Both deal with death. Brahms wrote the songs at the time when Clara Schumann was dying, and Webern wrote his pieces as a reaction to his mother dying."

The Brahms is contemplative and reflective. "It looks at death from the perspective of an old man, while Webern's is a young man reacting to death in a much more extreme fashion."

There is also a link between the Berg songs and Brahms.

"These early songs, which Berg wrote between 1905-08, are so transitional," Hardink said. "You can discern Mahler, Wagner and also Brahms. But in their tonal ambiguities and the use of whole tone scales, they're reminiscent of Debussy."

Even though Brahms wrote his C minor piano quartet long before the other works on the program, it still fits in nicely, Hardink said.

"He returned to the score and revised it 20 years after it was written, and when he sent it to his publisher he referred to it as 'the sorrows of young Werther.' " With that, Brahms acknowledged a connection to the novel of that name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that recounts the story of a young man in love with a married woman — a direct parallel to Brahms and his feelings for Clara Schumann, the wife of Robert Schumann.

"This is going to be an intense concert," Hardink said.

If you go:

What: NOVA Chamber Music Series

Where: Libby Gardner Concert Hall

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When: Jan. 24, 3 p.m.

How much: $15 general admission, $12 senior citizens, $5 students

Phone: 801-463-5223

Web: novachambermusicseries.org

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