By Sam Miller | June 1, 2026

On April 25th, 2025, Esther Abrami released an album titled “Women,” in which she played a collection of lesser known pieces by female composers. Abrami, who turned 29 last October, picked up her grandmother’s violin at the young age of 3, and fell in love with the instrument. Her grandmother had given up the violin after she got married, and Esther, “took where she left and kept going” (Gordemer). Today, the young violinist is an inspiration, encouraging young girls around the world to pick up the violin and pursue music. Her recent album, “Women,” seeks to do just that. By curating a collection of pieces composed by women, “Women” opens the door to what she calls the “hidden treasures” of classical music. The album includes works by many prominent female composers such as Ilse Weber and Hildegard Von Bingen. However, the final piece in the collection, “Transmission”, is composed by Abrami herself as a love letter to her grandmother.

Composed in 1881, Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra is the epitome of virtuosity. Inspired by the world-famous opera of the same name, the Carmen fantasy takes the famous themes and melodies from the opera and projects them on the violinist, creating a stunning work that challenges the very best violinists in the world today. The late 1880s was an exciting time for violin music. Composers like Ysaye, Kreisler, and Sarasate were composing incredible works that showed off the violin in new ways. These pieces were not composed with the concert hall in mind; Instead, these virtuosic compositions were made for salons and studios. In short, instead of the grand violin concertos by Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, these composers created short, yet virtuosic works that were designed to show off the violinist’s skill while also presenting a musical challenge. Furthermore, one of the key aspects of Sarasate’s works is that he gives plenty of wiggle room to the soloist to make the piece their own. Tempi and dynamics are often very loose, and the inherent “mood” of the piece is occasionally left ambiguous. The result of this is that no two performer’s interpretations are the same. Differing interpretations are nothing new in classical music, but Sarasate’s compositional style really exacerbates the difference between violinists. Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy is a textbook example of this philosophy. 

Samuel “Sam” Miller is a 12th grade student at Gonzaga Preparatory school who writes and distributes a weekly classical music blog that shares different classical songs and explores their background with his teachers and peers. He is an avid violinist studying under Mateusz Wolski, and an enthusiastic member of the Spokane Youth Symphony. Samuel started this project to pursue and share his passion for classical music with others. In his free time, Sam enjoys practicing violin, going to symphony concerts, playing tennis, hanging out with friends, video games, and spending time with his family.