Robert Chumbley, born in Miami in 1954, has had a multifaceted career, as concert pianist, conductor (he was Music Director for the Atlanta Ballet and Cleveland Opera), academic and composer. His music, though audibly contemporary, maintains a healthy relationship with tradition: his Permutations for piano and orchestra 'follows Liszt's use of melodic transformation and Prokofiev's pianistic acrobatics'; Brahmsiana II for solo piano emerges from the deeply felt sound-world of late Brahms; and the combination of the lyrical and the brittle in Chumbley's Five Bagatelles reconciles the modernist past with the more open-minded present. The Letter approaches Beethoven from an unusual angle - as a vulnerable human being: it sets an English translation of the impassioned love-letter he wrote in July 1812 to his 'Unsterbliche Geliebte' ('Immortal Beloved') as a dramatic cantata for baritone and orchestra.