Strauss and Strauss to perform piano and violin recital May 2

John Strauss, piano, and Virginia Strauss, violin, will present a faculty recital Saturday, May 2 at 4 p.m. in the Noble Recital Hall.

The performance is open to the public with no charge for admission.

The program will feature Trio in A Major, B. 448 by Ignaz Josef Pleyel, with Luther faculty member Eric Kutz, violoncello. This work is the most recent of a series of trios that the couple has researched, edited and computer-engraved for publication by Doblinger Verlag in Vienna, Austria, where Pleyel is a well-known composer.

The performance continues with Sonata in C minor, Op. 30 No. 2 by Beethoven and concludes with Sonata in A minor, Op. 105 by Robert Schumann.

J. Strauss is chairman and professor of music at Luther where has taught since 1975. Born and raised in New York, Strauss studied with Morton Estrin and Charles Rosen (both second-generation Liszt pupils) as well as with Joseph Schwartz and Paul Badura-Skoda.

He holds a degree in English from Oberlin College and the doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Texas-Austin.

J. Strauss has made numerous public radio and television broadcasts and has toured throughout the United States with the Oneota Chamber Players. His articles have appeared in such music periodicals as Clavier, The Musical Quarterly and Chamber Music America.

V. Strauss has taught violin and chamber music at Luther since 1975. Her teachers have included David Schneider, Paul Zukofsky and Leonard Posner, former concert master of the MBC Radio Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini.

V. Strauss in an active recitalist and a founding member of the Oneota Chamber Players, an ensemble which is heard on public radio and television, as well as in live performances throughout the United States. She performs as concertmaster of the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra.

The couple are coeditors of over a dozen works by Johann Baptist Vanhal, Georg Friedrich Fuchs and Johann Nepomuk Hummel for publishers Doblinger and H. Anderle (Vienna, Austria), and of the complete chamber music of Walter Rabl for A-R Editions (U.S.A.).