Over the years, the Miami Chamber Music Society has presented several collaborations with artists outside the discipline of music, particularly dance.
Beginning in 2013, the closing concerts of its annual Mainly Mozart Festival have included newly choreographed dances to accompany Paul Schoenfield’s Café Music and a chamber version of Liszt’s Dante Symphony, among others.
Friday night, the Society will offer another collaboration, this time with the violinist Joshua Bell, in town for a residency and concerts with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the British orchestra he leads, and Pontus Lidberg, a Swedish choreographer who heads the Danish Dance Theatre in nearby Denmark.
Lidberg has set a new dance Miami City Ballet dancers to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the string orchestra version of the slow movement of the American composer’s Op. 11 String Quartet.
Written in 1936, it became instantly popular in its string orchestra version after Arturo Toscanini led it in 1938, and it has become America’s unofficial funeral music. It was broadcast after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 and widely played as music of mourning after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
The American soprano Larisa Martínez, Bell’s wife, who also is appearing Saturday night at the Festival of the Arts Boca, will sing two relative rarities: “Ah, ritorna, età dell’oro” from Infelice, a concert scena for soprano and orchestra by Felix Mendelssohn, and “Jours de mon enfance (Days of My Youth)” from Le-Pré-aux-Clercs, an opéra-comique from 1832 by the now-forgotten French composer Ferdinand Hérold.
Martinez also will be the soloist in the best-known work of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, his Bachianas Brasilieras No. 5.
In addition, Bell will join the Society’s co-founder, the Ukrainian-American pianist Marina Radiushina, and the young American cellist Zlatomir Fung, in another work by Mendelssohn, his well-known Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor (Op. 49).
Rounding out the evening at the Knight Concert Hall in downtown Miami’s Arsht Center for the Performing Arts is another popular work by Barber, his Violin Concerto (Op. 14), with Bell as soloist.
“We are thrilled to continue our tradition of creating and presenting original work as well as for the formation of a unique partnership between Joshua Bell and the renowned Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Miami-based cultural organizations,” Radiushina said in a prepared statement. “We believe in original programming and the power of weaving intricately connected threads of cross-inspiration and ideas not only in terms of how classical composers impacted each other, but also going beyond that to how other art forms connect to music.”
Bell’s residency began last week, and has included master classes with students from the Lynn University Conservatory of Music in Boca Raton as well as the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, the New World Symphony, Florida International University, the Miami Music Project and the Greater Miami Youth Symphony.
Still to come is a series of master classes for cellists with Fung, which will be held Thursday.
“Part of the mission of the Miami Chamber Music Society is to invest in our community and build audiences by converting casual listeners to critical listeners,” said Mike Eidson, president of the Miami Chamber Music Society. “Coming out of the pandemic, we need inspiration for people to attend the performing arts. Together with the Arsht Center, we are bringing one of the most celebrated orchestras and the most famous American violinists to Miami.”
If You Go
Joshua Bell and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, joined by soprano Larisa Martinez, pianist Marina Radiushina, cellist Zlatomir Fung and Miami City Ballet dancers, will perform at 8 p.m. Friday in the Knight Concert Hall, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Tickets range from $50 to $170. Call 305-949-6722 or visit www.arshtcenter.org.