South Florida has a remarkably active and diverse classical music season in general, and this year some of the younger musical organizations are showing some real depth and growth.
Both the Boca Raton and Palm Beach symphonies have challenging, fresh programming throughout their seasons in Palm Beach County, and chamber music is well-represented in the Duncan, Flagler and Four Arts concert seasons.
The Kravis, Broward and Arsht centers each have their own classical series, and while many fine artists will be coming through in the 2012-13 season, there are some real standout events to anticipate, including a visit from the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Mahler Third Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra, and the arrival at last in South Florida of the pianist Simone Dinnerstein, who will present the entire Goldberg Variations of J.S. Bach in Miami’s Knight Concert Hall in January.
Palm Beach County
Kravis Center: The Regional Arts Concert Series has a better-than-average season this year, with excellent American orchestras – the New York Chamber Soloists, the Philadelphia and the Pittsburgh, on Feb. 19 – and a strong lineup of pianists, including Anton Kuerti (Jan. 8, with New York) and Andre Watts (Feb. 5 and 6, with the Philadelphia). Ireland’s Barry Douglas solos with the Russian National Orchestra in the Tchaikovsky First (Feb. 27) and the Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody (Feb. 28), and Louis Lortie brings Beethoven’s Fourth on March 20 with the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn. Duo-pianists and brothers Anthony and Joseph Paratore perform April 3, and the great Russian Evgeny Kissin is heard in music of Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert on April 16.
The Young Artists series this year includes pianist Jade Simmons (Dec. 3), an African-American woman (still rare in classical music) who’s soloed at the White House; the Harlem Quartet (Jan. 15), which recorded an intriguing disc of music by Wynton Marsalis; the Jasper String Quartet (Feb. 11), quartet in residence at Ohio’s Oberlin Conservatory; and the Italian pianist Mariangela Vacatello (March 11), a winner of the Queen Elizabeth Competition.
The fine young American cellist Alisa Weilerstein solos (in Haydn’s C major) with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields on March 19, and the excellent German violinist Augustin Hadelich brings the Beethoven Violin Concerto on Feb. 19 with the Jacksonville Symphony and its longtime director, Fabio Mechetti (the Pittsburgh had been scheduled earlier for this date, but canceled). There are appearances by the National Symphonies of Cuba (Nov. 10 and 11) and China (Jan. 22), and it’s also a good year for chamber music, with the St. Lawrence String Quartet (Haydn, Britten and Dvorak) on Nov. 24, and the Tokyo String Quartet, in its farewell tour, with music of Mozart, Kodaly and Brahms (Jan. 13).
Society of the Four Arts: The venerable Palm Beach arts campus offers a good lineup of string quartets, including the St. Petersburg (Jan. 27), Fry Street (Feb. 17) and Artemis (March 10), as well as the offbeat Rastrelli Cello Quartet (Jan. 20) and the Turtle Island String Quartet (Jan. 23). Returning again will be the American Chamber Players (Jan. 6), and pianist Jeffrey Siegel, a longtime feature of this series, offers his conversation-and-performance programs on Jan. 9 and March 17. One particularly fun event should be the Chamber Orchestra of the Kremlin, featuring as soloist the Russian jazzman Arkady Shilkloper playing the alphorn (March 20), and the young players of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute in suburban Chicago arrive March 24.
The eminent Russian pianist Vladimir Feltsman is the big solo recital this season (March 13), and the Palm Beach International Piano Festival offers some young players Feb. 24.
Flagler Museum: Five concerts in the music room of the Whitehall mansion on Palm Beach are planned again this season, followed as ever by a tasty reception with champagne and an irresistible selection of finger foods (including everyone’s favorite, gourmet macaroons). Italy’s Quartetto Bernini opens the series Jan. 8, followed by the Utrecht String Quartet of the Netherlands on Jan. 22. London’s Schubert Ensemble brings piano quartets by Mahler, Mozart and Schumann on Feb. 5, and the Vienna Piano Trio of Austria arrives Feb. 19. The series closes with Germany’s Auryn Quartet on March 5.
Duncan Theatre: Mark Alexander has scheduled four programs on his Wednesday-afternoon Classical Café series in the Duncan’s Stage West black-box theater. Miami’s veteran Amernet String Quartet, based at Florida International University, joined by pianist Milana Strezeva, arrives Jan. 9, followed by the young and prodigious pianist Conrad Tao on Jan. 23. The Merling Trio, based at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich., appears Feb. 27, and the series wraps with the excellent Euclid Quartet on March 13.
Seraphic Fire: The Miami-based concert choir got a huge boost to its profile when it was nominated earlier this year for two Grammy Awards. It didn’t win, but the exposure appeared to boost crowds, and it’s likely they’ll continue to do so in its 11th season. The choir returns this year to its Boca Raton venue at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church near Mizner Park, opening Oct. 18 with American choral music in a concert called Simple Gifts. Settings of the Psalms by Bach, Monteverdi, Pachelbel and Virgil Thomson follow on Nov. 15, and two Christmas specials – a concert of candle-lit holiday songs (Dec. 13) and the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah (Dec. 21) – follow after that.
An all-Gregorian chant concert featuring Marian medieval hymns is set for Jan. 17, and the following month brings a reprise of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Feb. 24), which the choir presented very successfully a few seasons back. The expert soprano and Seraphic Fire regular Kathryn Mueller stars March 21 in a concert of solo cantatas by Vivaldi, and on April 11, the choir marks the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Juan Ponce de León by performing the music of the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque. The choir closes its season May 9 with Cathedral Classics, a concert of choral favorites such as Randall Thompson’s Alleluia, with an audience-selection component.
Palm Beach Symphony: The chamber orchestra is making numerous changes this season, with new executive director Michael Finn managing things. The group, conducted by music director Ramon Tebar, will perform its five regular concerts in various Palm Beach and its programming reflects Finn’s long experience as a bassoonist in groups such as the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The first concert Dec. 9 at the Four Arts opens with the Dance Preludes of Witold Lutoslawski, and continues with short symphonies by Piazzolla, Poulenc, Ibert, and the Classical Symphony of Prokofiev. The Jan. 6 concert at the Flagler Museum is based on the number 39 and features Mozart and Haydn’s 39th, the Op. 39 of Dvorak (the Czech Suite) and the Concierto de Aranjuez of Rodrigo, written in 1939; the soloist is Sebastian Acosta-Fox. The Erwin Stein chamber reduction of the Mahler Fourth Symphony is the major work on the third concert (Feb. 18, Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church), along with two Johann Strauss II waltzes arranged by Schoenberg.
The Mar-a-Lago Resort is the site of the March 1 concert, featuring the Fifth and Sixth symphonies of Beethoven, and on the 28th of that month, the orchestra returns to the resort for its gala fundraiser, featuring reprise appearances by pianist Lola Astanova and conductor Jahja Ling. The young Brazilian tenor Thiago Arancam is on hand to sing Italian opera favorites. The last concert, April 9 at the Kravis Center, is a Spanish-themed concert with music by De Falla, Chabrier, Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov.
Boca Symphonia: Noted French pianist and conductor Philippe Entremont returns for another season at the podium with the orchestra, which performs again this year at the Roberts Theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School in western Boca Raton. Violinist Dan Zhu joins the Boca on Dec. 2 for the Mendelssohn Concerto on a concert with Copland’s Appalachian Spring and the Sinfonietta of the now-neglected American composer Walter Piston. The great American conductor Gerard Schwarz guests on Jan. 27 to conduct his son Julian, a cellist, in the Shostakovich Concerto No. 1, along with music by J.S. Bach, Schubert and Haydn (the Miracle Symphony). Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto is in the capable hands of the South Korean-born pianist Yoonie Han on Feb. 24, a concert that also includes the rarely heard Second Symphony of Camille Saint-Saens.
Flutist Jennifer Grim is the soloist March 24 in the first Mozart Flute Concerto (K. 313); Ottorino Respighi’s The Birds and Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen Suite round out the program. Regular Festival of the Arts Boca conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos guests April 21 with violinist Ilana Setapen, who plays a great concerto, the Dvorak (in A minor, Op. 53), so unaccountably ignored on concert programs. Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony and Lawrence Dillon’s Amadeus ex Machina, a clever take on the Mozart 40th Symphony, share the bill of fare.
Lynn Philharmonia: Lynn University’s Conservatory of Music has fielded a very good young orchestra that has gotten better with each season. This year’s concerts have been truncated by the presidential debate in late October at the university, but after an all-American outdoor concert Nov. 4 at Mizner Park, the orchestra returns to its home base at the Wold Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 1 and 2 with a concert featuring the winners of the annual concerto competition.
Violinist Elmar Oliveira plays the Saint-Saens Third Concerto on the Philharmonia’s Feb. 2 and 3 programs (under guest conductor Guillermo Figueroa), and on Feb. 23 and 24, conservatory dean Jon Robertson conducts the Tcha0ikovsky Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture and Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. The group joins the Palm Beach Opera on April 12 and 14 for Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, and the shortened season ends April 20 and 21 with double bassist Timothy Cobb in the Koussevitzky Concerto.
South Florida Symphony: Sebrina Alfonso’s national pickup orchestra, formerly the Key West Symphony, returns to the Crest Theatre at the Delray Beach Center for the Arts with three programs offering some superlative young soloists. The Canadian violinist Lara St. John plays the Tchaikovsky Concerto on a program with the Bruckner Fourth Symphony on Nov. 19, and the American pianist Natasha Paremski takes center stage Jan. 14 in the Rachmaninov Third Concerto; the rest of the program includes Richard Strauss’ Macbeth and Sibelius’s Pohjola’s Daughter.
The exciting young cellist Zuill Bailey wraps up the three-concert season April 8 with the beautiful Cello Concerto of Sir Edward Elgar. Brahms’ Second Symphony shares the rest of the program with the Rosamunde Overture of Schubert.
Delray String Quartet: The foursome enters its ninth season still playing at the Colony Hotel in downtown Delray Beach and at All Saints Episcopal, but has not scheduled any Miami concerts this year. It’s recorded the Fifth String Quartet of Kenneth Fuchs, which was commissioned for it, and will also be doing a disc of the Glazunov Fifth Quartet and the Piano Quintet of Cesar Franck, with pianist Tao Lin. Its Delray concerts open Nov. 25 with the Dvorak American Quartet (No. 12 in F) and some non-quartet works including the Prokofiev Two-Violin Sonata and the Beethoven Eyeglasses Duo for viola and cello. The Dec. 9 program expands to sextet literature, including Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence and a movement from the Brahms Sextet No. 1 (in B-flat); guests are violist Born Lau and cellist Aaron Merritt.
Pianist Lin performs the Franck with the quartet Feb. 17 on an eclectic program including Franz Hoffmeister’s String Quartet with viola d’amore and Zhou Long’s Chinese Folksongs. The March 17 concert features the Glazunov Fifth and smaller pieces such as a Mozart duo for violin and viola (K. 423) and the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia. Harpist Deborah Fleisher is the guest April 14 for arrangements of a Handel Harp Concerto and Saint-Saens’ The Swan; the Debussy String Quartet also is on the schedule.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church: Keith Paulson-Thorp’s series at the Delray Beach church has already begun its 25th season. The Delray String Quartet guests Oct. 14 in the two American Quartets by Dvorak and Kenneth Fuchs, followed Nov. 18 in another national-themed concert by the puckishly named Camerata del Re Baroque ensemble; this concert features music from Baroque Scandinavia, including Denmark’s Dietrich Buxtehude.
Violinist Mei Mei Luo, first violinist of the Delray Quartet, returns for a solo appearance with pianist Daphne Spottiswoode on Jan. 20 (the Prokofiev Sonata No. 2 is planned), and Wellington-based violinist Gareth Johnson is joined by pianist Tao Lin for a recital Feb. 3. The St. Paul’s Choir and Sinfonia del Re collaborate with choirs from All Saints Episcopal and the Pine Crest School for the South Florida premiere of the Welsh composer Karl Jenkins’ The Peacemakers on March 3 (repeated March 10 at All Saints).
Cellist Ian Maksin returns to South Florida from his Chicago base for a solo recital April 21, and the season closes May 19 with Sunshine Trio, a flute, viola and harp threesome, in music of Debussy and Tournier.
Palm Beach Atlantic University: New this year at the Christian college in West Palm Beach is a chamber music and dance event called the Distinguished Artists Series. First up is the Chicago-based Lincoln Trio (Nov. 2), who recently appeared on the Flagler Museum series, followed Dec. 14 by pianist Chiao-Ting (Catherine) Lan, who is planning an all-Mendelssohn program.
Soprano Suzanne Galer is joined by PBAU faculty members Jan. 11 for a program in which the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes are the highlight, and on March 1, Brahms is again the featured composer when the Merling Trio, having appeared earlier that week at the Duncan, is joined by Atlanta Symphony violinist Jun-Ching Lin. The series wraps April 19 with the Palm Beach Atlantic Symphony and three soloists – a returning Catherine Lan, violinist James Buswell and cellist Carol Ou – as soloists in the Beethoven Triple Concerto.
Broward County
Broward Center for the Performing Arts: The Fort Lauderdale venue has scheduled a four-concert classical series with some well-known names, beginning with the eminent American pianist Murray Perahia, who hasn’t appeared in South Florida for years. Among the pieces on his Oct. 29 program are Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, the Op. 94 Moments Musicals of Schubert, and the Scherzo No. 1 of Chopin. On Jan. 7, violinist Itzhak Perlman makes one of his annual South Florida appearances in recital. No word yet on his program, though usually the second half is a collection of short favorites that he chooses onstage. Pianist Barry Douglas joins Vasily Petrenko and the Russian National Orchestra on Feb. 26 for the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto on an all-Russian program that includes Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. The series ends March 18 with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, featuring cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan.
Chameleon Musicians: It’s the 11th season for Iris van Eck’s durable little Sunday afternoon chamber music series in downtown Fort Lauderdale, which is expanding to six concerts this year. The season opens Oct. 7 with an afternoon of piano trios by Beethoven, followed Nov. 25 with a program of string trios by Beethoven and Alfred Schnittke, as well as the Piano Quartet of Josef Suk, featuring pianist Stephen Swedish. Van Eck takes center stage Jan. 13 with music for cello and piano by Stravinsky, Schubert and Barber, joined by pianist Kemal Gekic. Flutist Aldo Baerten appears Feb. 17 in chamber music by Haydn, Villa-Lobos and Reicha, and on April 7, the program is devoted to string quintets by Beethoven and Brahms, with van Eck sitting in with the Amernet String Quartet. The season ends May 12 with piano trios by Tchaikovsky, Schubert and the late Romantic Swedish composer Elfrida Andrée.
Symphony of the Americas: James Brooks-Bruzzese’s durable band has had a good relationship with the young pianist/composer Conrad Tao, who this spring will join the orchestra at the Broward Center for one of great pianistic hat tricks, the complete piano concertos of Beethoven (Nos. 1-3 on April 15, and Nos. 4 and 5 on April 16). The Italian-born violinist Roberto Cani performs the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto Jan. 22 on a program with that same composer’s Romeo and Juliet and the now rarely heard Zampa overture of Herold. Vocal music is also big this year, with the Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida guesting with the orchestra on March 19, and on Feb. 26, the orchestra’s popular Opera to Broadway evening returns with the Australian soprano Donna Balson, American soprano Courtenay Budd, Polish baritone Marcin Bronikowski and the Spanish tenor Eduardo Aladren. And the orchestra’s principal trumpeter, Claudio Osorio, leads the group’s brass players in a special holiday concert Dec. 11.
Master Chorale of South Florida: The chorus created as part of the Florida Philharmonic enters its 10th independent season with another change: Director Karen Kennedy is stepping down just a year after being appointed, citing the pressure of her work as director of choral activities at the University of Miami. She’ll lead a couple of the concerts, but a search is on for a new director. In the meantime, the chorale opens its season Nov. 2 and 4 with performances in Pompano Beach and Miami of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The women of the chorus then appear Nov. 16 and 17 in the fifth movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra at the Knight Concert Hall in downtown Miami, and the whole chorus is back in January for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Orchestra Firenze in Florence Morgenstern’s Community Arts Program series at Boca’s Spanish River Church (Jan. 8, 10 and 14; also at the Boca Community Church Jan. 9 and 12); they’ll sing the same work March 14 and 15 with the Tampa Bay Chorale and the Cleveland Orchestra at the Arsht Center. The season closes April 19-21 with three gala concerts featuring Kennedy and the two previous conductors of the chorale, Jo-Michael Scheibe and Joshua Habermann. The big work on that program will be British composer John Rutter’s Mass for the Children.
Miami-Dade County
Arsht Center: The Miami performing arts venue’s fourth season opens with the splendid American pianist Simone Dinnerstein in her South Florida debut, playing the entire Goldberg Variations of J.S. Bach at the Knight Concert Hall on Jan. 13. This is a real event for local concertgoers, and should not be missed. The Philadelphia Orchestra and Andre Watts perform Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto on Feb. 7 with conductor Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, and Giancarlo Guerrero leads the Cleveland Orchestra on March 14 in the Beethoven Ninth and the Neruda Songs of Peter Lieberson, with mezzo Elizabeth DeShong as soloist. (A concert by the Pittsburgh Symphony set for Feb. 21 has been canceled; no word yet on whether the Jacksonville and Augustin Hadelich will replace them.)
New World Symphony: The Miami Beach-based orchestral academy, now comfortably ensconced at the New World Center on 17th Street, has a large lineup of orchestral and chamber concerts set for its 25th anniversary season. Special guests include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who plays the Schumann concerto with Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World (Oct. 20); pianist Yefim Bronfman in the Bartok Piano Concerto No. 2 (Jan. 4 and 5) with Robert Spano; and pianist Orion Weiss in the early Burleske of Richard Strauss (May 3 and 4) with Marek Jankowski.
The season opened Oct. 6 and 7 with MTT leading an all-Russian program featuring Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Stravinsky’s Petrushka, to be followed Oct. 19 by the first Wallcast of the season – the concert projected onto the wall of the Gehry-designed New World Center for an outside audience – with the Beethoven Eroica Symphony. Violinist Renaud Capucon plays the Mendelssohn Concerto (Nov. 10-11) with Stephane Deneve, and on Dec. 1, composer John Adams returns to lead the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the orchestra in his new Absolute Jest and Elliott Carter’s Variations for Orchestra.
Finnish composer Kaija Saarijaho’s Clarinet Concerto gets its U.S. premiere with clarinetist Kari Kriikku under conductor Susanna Malkki (Dec. 15 and 16), while Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto gets a rare area performance Jan. 27 with Rainer Honeck on a program that also features cellist Tomas Varga in the concerto Arnold Schoenberg fashioned from a harpsichord concerto by Georg Monn. Toronto Symphony conductor Peter Oundjian leads pianist Valentina Lisitsa in the Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini as well as Vaughan Williams’ Fourth Symphony (March 16 and 17), and on March 30, German conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher offers his own Reflections on Narcissus (with cellist Joshua Roman), Hans Werner Henze’s Eighth Symphony and Will Sound, composed for Carnegie Hall in 2006 by Wolfgang Rihm. And Soprano Kiera Duffy joins MTT and the orchestra April 27 and 28 in the Mahler Fourth Symphony on a program that also features violinist Christian Tetzlaff in the Brahms Violin Concerto.
University of Miami: The university’s annual Festival Miami, which lasts until Nov. 4, features numerous classical performances, opening earlier this week with Leon Fleisher directing the Frost Symphony Orchestra as well as giving a talk about his career. The Frost Wind Ensemble presents new music by Jennifer Higdon (Percussion Concerto) and Paul Dooley (Point Blank) at its Oct. 7 concert, and pianist Santiago Rodriguez is heard in recital Oct. 12 in sonatas by Chopin, Rachmaninov and pieces by his Cuban countryman Ernesto Lecuona. Soprano Ana Maria Martinez presents an evening of operatic favorites Oct. 13, and the Frost Chamber Players are heard the next day in music by Saint-Saens, Beethoven, Poulenc, Piazzolla, Bill Douglas and Stephen Guerra, whose Sights and Sounds for alto sax, woodwind quintet and piano gets its world premiere. And on Oct. 21, two young peoples’ ensembles – the South Florida Youth Symphony and the Greater Miami Youth Symphony – perform works by Charles Mason, Lawrence Moore and UM professor Dennis Kam.
Cleveland Orchestra: In addition to the Mahler Third Symphony concerts (Nov. 16 and 17) and those of the Beethoven Ninth (March 15 and 16), the orchestra welcomes violinist Joshua Bell to the Knight Concert Hall on Jan. 25 and 26 for the Beethoven Violin Concerto; conductor Franz Welser-Most, having made a superlative case for the Shostakovich Sixth Symphony last season, leads the Clevelanders in what may be the composer’s best symphony, his Tenth. Those concerts are followed Feb. 1 and 2 by pianist Garrick Ohlsson in the Beethoven Fourth Concerto and Welser-Most leading the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique.
Miami Symphony Orchestra: Eduardo Marturet opens the new season Oct. 21 with pianist Konstantin Soukhovetski in the Rachmaninov Third Concerto, and then turns over the podium Nov. 10 and 11 to a fellow Venezuelan, Joshua Dos Santos, for a program of music by Schoenberg, Haydn, Revueltas and Mozart. A program of film music (Rota, Williams, Morricone, and classical selections) is on the bill Dec. 15 and 16, and on Jan. 20, it’s Ocean Drive in Vienna, a South Florida take on the traditional Viennese New Year celebrations.
Valentine’s Day is marked Feb. 9 and 10 with a love-themed program of music by Wagner (the Liebestod from Tristan), Webern, Elgar and Janacek, and harpist Kristi Shade arrives March 2 and 3 for a harp version of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. Concertmaster Dani Andai leads the band April 6 and 7 in the Duet-Concertino of Richard Strauss (with soloists Nuno Antunes, clarinet, and bassoonist Adrian Morejon), plus Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and harmonica soloist Corky Siegel is featured April 20 in William Russo’s Street Music; pianist Monique Duphil also plays the Ravel Piano Concerto on the same program.
The season ends with pianist Philippe Entremont on May 3 in an all-Brahms concert featuring the Piano Concerto No. 1 and the Fourth Symphony.
Chopin Foundation: The piano recital series, which presents free Saturday concerts at the Broward Main Library and free Sunday concerts at the Granada Presbyterian Church in Coral Gables, opens with teenagers Gabrielle Chou and Connie Chen (Oct. 20 and 21), followed by Steven Lin (Jan. 12-13), Yi-Yang Chen (Feb. 16-17), Igor Lovchinsky (March 9-10, with violinist Christina McGann), and Piotr Kosinski (May 18-19). And the cellist Jonah Kim is also on the series Dec. 1 and 2, accompanied by pianist Andrew Tyson.
Sunday Afternoons of Music: Soprano Nadine Sierra, an impressive Gilda in last season’s Rigoletto at Florida Grand Opera, performs a recital of Broadway and operatic selections with pianist Gordon Roberts on Jan. 13 in this long-running series at UM’s Gusman Hall; Sierra’s younger sister Melanie also is on the program. On Jan. 26 (a Saturday), a piano trio of Alon Goldstein, Soovin Kim and Amit Peled perform solo works and the Third Piano Trio of Dvorak, followed Feb. 17 by the excellent South Korean violinist Chee-Yun Kim, in recital with the fine Italian pianist Alessio Bax; the program includes sonatas by Beethoven, Brahms and Ferruccio Busoni. Canadian violinist Lara St. John and pianist Martin Kennedy team up March 10 for a recital that includes the Franck Sonata and world premiere pieces by Kennedy (Song of the Moon) and John Psathas (Two Greek Songs), and pianist Alan Gampel plays in a Saturday evening concert March 16.
Pianist Marina Radiushina’s Pulse Chamber Music group is on the schedule April 21, joined by violinist Scott Flavin of the Bergonzi Quartet and his wife, clarinetist Margaret Donaghue Flavin, and the season ends May 5 with the Cypress String Quartet of San Francisco.
Friends of Chamber Music of Miami: Julian Kreeger’s series has a great season this year beginning with pianists Anton Kuerti (Oct. 11) and Nikolai Lugansky (Oct. 25). The excellent Czech foursome of the Prazak Quartet returns to South Florida with violist Roberto Diaz on Oct. 30, and the venerable Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio makes its annual area pilgrimage on Jan. 9.
The Tokyo String Quartet plays one of its farewell concerts Jan. 15, and the pianist Cyprien Katsaris is next on Feb. 6. The young British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor arrives Feb. 19 for a return engagement, and the Ehnes String Quartet, led by violinist James Ehnes, returns March 3. The young Polish sensation Rafal Blechacz is in recital May 7, and the series closes May 15 with the rising bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, accompanied by pianist Ken Noda.
Miami Bach Society: The society’s 13th Tropical Baroque Festival runs from March 1-9 this year, and includes a “jazz Bach” program by pianist and UM School of Music dean Shelly Berg (March 1), the ensemble Fuoco e Cenere (March 2 and 8), Brass Miami (March 3), the European medieval ensemble Mala Punica (March 4), Italy’s Virtuosi delle Muse (March 5), Italian harpsichordist Luca Guglielmi (March 6), and France’s La Poeme Harmonique (March 7). Other concerts include two featuring UM’s Collegium Musicum and Society founder Donald Oglesby on Oct. 21 and Nov. 25 (that concert feature’s J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio), and the Canadian-American ensemble Il Furioso on April 14.
Treasure Coast
Atlantic Classical Orchestra: Stewart Robinson’s chamber orchestra, which performs at Vero Beach’s Waxlax Center and Stuart’s Lyric Theatre, welcomes the Russian pianist Vladimir Feltsman in the Beethoven Emperor Concerto (Jan. 3 and 4), followed Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 by violinist Marina Lenau in the Dvorak Violin Concerto on a program that also features a world premiere by composer David Conte. Harpist Bridget Kibbey plays music by Saint-Saens and Marcel Grandjany on March 7 and 8, and the season wraps April 4 and 5 with pianist Tao Lin in the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24, on a program with Paul Dooley’s Pomo Canyon Air and Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony.
Lyric Theatre: The Stuart theater’s Ovation Concert Series features performances by the Canadian Brass (Jan. 9), violinist Joshua Bell (Feb. 26), flutist James Galway (March 12), pianist Noboyuki Tsujii (March 23), and violinist Lara St. John (March 27).