As always, the classical season in South Florida is a relatively rich one, with plenty of activity in solo, chamber and orchestral music to interest a wide variety of listeners. The season is still somewhat smaller than it used to be, but there is still enough here for some strong months of concertgoing.
Special events include appearances by the London Symphony, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Chicago Symphony and Les Arts Florissants, the return of violinist Hilary Hahn and soprano Renée Fleming, and appearances by rising stars of the classical world such as conductor Klaus Mäkelä.
Here’s a month-by-month look at the season.
October: Patrick Dupré Quigley’s concert choir Seraphic Fire has proven since its founding to be a rare and remarkable part of the South Florida music scene; it remains the only Grammy-nominated classical music ensemble in our area. It opens it new season with a concert called “A Brief History of Western Music,” which takes listeners from the 12th century (Hildegard’s Ordo Virtutum) to the 20th (Stravinsky’s Ave Maria), with stops in the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods in between. The concert, devised with the assistance of University of Rochester musicologist Honey Meconi, can be heard Oct. 13 at the Kravis Center.
November: The Lynn University Conservatory of Music presents four young musicians who have won the concerto competition in performances Nov. 9 and 10 at the Boca Raton college’s Wold Performing Arts Center with the Lynn Philharmonia. The Palm Beach Symphony gets its season underway with guest cellist Julian Schwarz, son of artistic director Gerard Schwarz, performing the most beloved of all cello concerti, the Concerto in B minor of Antonin Dvořák. The program opens with South Florida native Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Celebration and closes with the Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (Nov. 10, Kravis Center). The Master Chorale of South Florida opens its 22nd season on the weekend of Nov. 16 and 17 with two performances of Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah at Lynn’s Wold Center; director Brett Karlin leads the chorus and the Lynn Philharmonia.
On Nov. 17, The Symphonia, based in Boca Raton, begins its season at its usual venue of St. Andrews School with violinist Andrés Cárdenes performing the Concerto No. 5 of the Belgian Romantic virtuoso Henri Vieuxtemps; the concert, led by principal conductor Alastair Willis, opens with the Celebration overture of American composer James Stephenson and finishes with the Pulcinella Suite of Stravinsky. The first of several out-of-town celebrity orchestras arrives at the Kravis on Nov. 19 when Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra makes its first North American tour under the baton of the impossibly young conductor-designate, 28-year-old Finnish cellist Klaus Mäkelä. He and the Concertgebouw will be joined by the Georgian-born violinist Lisa Batiashvili in an all-Russian program featuring Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila overture and the Second Symphony of Rachmaninov. On Nov. 21 at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea on Palm Beach, the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach launches its 12th season with a sextet of fine string players and pianist Michael Stephen Brown in music of Ernest Chausson (Poème, and the Concert for Piano, Violin and String Quartet) and Eugène Ysaÿe (Rêve d’enfant).
December: The Society of the Four Arts launches its seasonal programs with a visit from the San Francisco male choir Chanticleer in a new version of its perennially popular Christmas program (Dec. 4 at the Society). The Spanish clarinetist José Franch-Ballester is the featured soloist the next day at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach in music of Brahms, Beethoven, Estonian minimalist Arvo Pärt, and the late Romantic German composer Robert Kahn for the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach. The holiday spirit settles in Dec. 7 at Mizner Park Amphitheater for a concert of holiday music led by Jacomo Bairos, founder of Miami’s NuDeco Ensemble. Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos is the guest at the Palm Beach Symphony on Dec. 10 at the Kravis Center, where he’ll play the Brahms Violin Concerto on a program with Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony and American composer Christopher Theofanidis’s atmospheric Rainbow Body.
Seraphic Fire brings its annual Christmas concert Dec. 11 to the Kravis Center, and on Dec. 14, the Master Chorale of South Florida presents two performances of its annual holiday music concert at St. Gregory’s Episcopal. On Dec. 15, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra from Philadelphia’s legendary Curtis Institute of Music comes to the same venue with conductor Teddy Abrams and Australian violinist Ray Chen for a performance of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. The program also includes music by the young American composer T.J. Cole (Death of the Poet), George Walker’s Lilacs, and the Third Symphony of Aaron Copland. Closing out the month is harpist Parker Ramsay in a recital on the Young Artists series at the Kravis’s Rinker Playhouse (Dec. 18).
January: The great American soprano Renée Fleming presents a special recital Jan. 5 at the Kravis Center with a program called Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, with songs reflecting nature’s inspiring power and mankind’s abuse of it; a special National Geographic video will accompany the music. At the Four Arts, artistic adviser Wu Han presents a four-concert festival devoted to the music of Felix Mendelssohn: On Jan. 12, violinist Julian Rhee joins Wu Han and cellist David Finckel for the Violin Sonata in F, the Cello Sonata No. 2 and the Piano Trio No. 2. That same day at St. Gregory’s, conductor James Judd leads The Symphonia and guitarist Jason Vieaux in Mexican composer Samuel Zyman’s Guitar Concerto. Also planned is West Palm Beach-reared composer Richard Danielpour’s Souvenirs and the Seventh Symphony of Beethoven.
French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays the Ravel Piano Concerto in G with the Palm Beach Symphony at the Kravis on Jan. 13; Higdon’s Blue Cathedral and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony round out the program. The Mendelssohn Festival at the Four Arts continues Jan. 15 with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center performing the early Concerto fo Violin, Piano and Strings along with music by Schumann. On Jan. 16, Seraphic Fire revisits the story of the Capilla Flamenca, the choir to the 16th-century Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, with music by Heinrich Isaac, Jacobus Clemens non Papa, and Francisco Guerrero, among others. The University of Miami’s Amanda Quist conducts at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra returns to the Kravis on Jan. 17 with emeritus conductor Riccardo Muti in music of Bellini (the overture to Norma) and two great Romantic symphonies: Schubert’s Eighth (the Unfinished) and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth. Conductor Jon Robertson leads the Lynn Philharmonia in two concerts Jan. 18 and 19 with Andres Cardenes in the Bruch Violin Concerto; the programs also include Barber’s Adagio for Strings and the Symphony No. 1 of Brahms. The Four Arts’s Mendelssohn Festival concludes Jan. 19 with the composer’s Octet for Strings, his early Piano Quartet in F minor, and four-hand piano music including selections from his incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
On Jan. 22, the 16-year-old Australian violin prodigy Amaryn Olmeda is featured at the Rinker Playhouse in a Young Artists recital. That same day, the Classical Café series resumes at the Duncan Theatre at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth Beach with the New York-based Lysander Piano Trio in the afternoon; at the Norton Museum that evening, the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach welcomes eight violinists, including James Ehnes and Tessa Lark, in the Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi and its now frequently programmed companion piece, Astor Piazzola’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. The Four Arts hosts the eminent British pianist Stephen Hough in recital on Jan. 26; his program includes the sonatas in B minor of Liszt and Chopin, as well as pieces by the French Romantic Cécile Chaminade. And one more major orchestra stops by the Kravis on Jan. 27, when the Cleveland Orchestra, led by the Singaporean conductor Kahchun Wong, features Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji in the Beethoven Violin Concerto. The Ohioans also play Ravel’s orchestration of the Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition.
February: The 2025 music series of Tuesday night concerts at the Flagler Museum on Palm Beach opens Feb. 4 with the Borromeo String Quartet, which has planned Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet and Mozart’s Hoffmeister Quartet. Speaking of Schubert, the Austrian master’s lieder will be at the heart of tenor Nicholas Phan’s recital Jan. 5 at the Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church; that same day at the Four Arts, members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center present a concert of music by Spanish composers including Turina, Rodrigo, Falla, Obradors and Sarasate. The splendid American violinist Gil Shaham solos with the Palm Beach Symphony on Feb. 6 at the Kravis Center in the Beethoven Violin Concerto, with conductor Gerard Schwarz wrapping the program with Mahler’s First Symphony.
Conductor Guillermo Figueroa leads the Lynn Philharmonia and violist Sheila Browne in the Concerto en Tango of Uruguay’s Miguel del Aguila on Feb. 8 and 9 at the Wold Center; Figueroa also has programmed the Jupiter Symphony of Mozart and the Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2 of Ravel. Conductor Carolyn Kuan leads The Symphonia at St. Gregory’s on Feb. 9 in Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta and the Prague Symphony of Mozart; bassoonist Gabriel Beavers is the soloist in Zwilich’s Bassoon Concerto. The Jupiter String Quartet comes to the Flagler Museum on Feb. 11 for music by Haydn (Op. 77, No. 2), Brahms (Quartet No. 1) and the early Langsamer Satz of Anton Webern. The Australian classical guitar duo Ziggy and Miles, featuring brothers Ziggy and Miles Johnston, is heard Feb. 12 at the Rinker Playhouse in the Young Artist Series; that same day the Dover Quartet offers the Prussian Quartet of Mozart, Schumann’s First Quartet, and the String Quartet No. 1 of Tchaikovsky at the Four Arts. Vocal music is in the spotlight at the Four Arts on Feb. 16 with a concert by the young singers of the Metropolitan Opera’s prestigious Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.
Haydn’s employer at Esterhaza, Prince Nicholas, loved to play the baryton, a now-obsolete instrument similar to a cello but with an extra set of sympathetic strings inside. The Valencia Baryton Project is committed to performing this lovely music in its original setting of viola, baryton and cello, and has programmed six of Haydn’s trios for a concert Feb. 18 at the Flagler Museum. String quartet aficionados will have a feast Feb. 19, with two superlative foursomes in concert that same day, starting with an afternoon concert by the Calidore String Quartet at the Duncan Theatre with three great Beethoven quartets, Nos. 10 (Harp), 11 (Serioso) and 12. In the evening, the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach hosts the Escher Quartet at the Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in music of Mozart (Prussian Quartet No. 1), Barber (the Adagio from his lone quartet), and Quartet No. 14 of Dvořák.
The French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet marks the 150th birthday of Maurice Ravel with an all-Ravel concert Feb. 23 at the Four Arts, while on Feb. 24 at the Kravis, violinist Daniel Hope returns with his Polish Chamber Orchestra of Sinfonia Varsovia in music of Mozart (Violin Concerto No. 3), Haydn (Symphony No. 49) and the Polish composer Wojciech Kilar (Orawa). France’s Trio Karénine visits the Flagler on Feb. 25 with an all-French program of piano trios by Ravel, Saint-Saëns and Germaine Tailleferre. The young Viano Quartet comes to the Four Arts on Feb. 26 for music by Haydn, Dvořák (Quartet No. 13) and Moonshot, a tribute to Apollo 11 by the American composer Alastair Coleman.
March: The month opens auspiciously with a first-ever appearance by the London Symphony Orchestra at the Kravis Center. Conductor Antonio Pappano welcomes Dutch violinist Janine Jansen in Bernstein’s Serenade, a violin concerto in everything but name, and follows that with Mahler’s First Symphony (March 1). Many of the German Romantic composers of the 19th century wrote a good deal of choral music that has fallen victim to changing performance practices. Seraphic Fire remedies that March 2 at St. Gregory’s with music by Brahms, Clara Schumann, Fanny Hensel and her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Over at the Kravis that same day, pianist Garrick Ohlsson performs Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with the Palm Beach Symphony. The concert opens with two American works: Paul Creston’s Invitation and Dance and Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2 (Romantic). The Flagler Museum closes its series March 4 with a return visit by violinist Elissa Lee Koljonen, who will perform sonatas by Brahms and Grieg as well as Bach’s imposing Chaconne and short works by Lili Boulanger and Maurice Ravel.
The Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach presents Baroque music on March 6 at the Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea when oboist James Austin Smith, violinist Bella Hristova and other musicians perform three concertos by Bach and one of the Tafelmusik of Georg Philipp Telemann. The legendary Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman returns to the Kravis with pianist Rohan de Silva for his annual recital (March 10), and on March 12, no fewer than three concerts vie for attention: Finland’s Erinys Quartet at the Rinker Playhouse (program TBA); violinists Paul Huang and Danbi Um with pianist Juho Pohjonen in music by Ysaÿe, Moszkowski, Sarasate and the American violinist Amy Barlowe at the Four Arts; and the Kouzov Duo of cellist Dmitry Kouzov and his wife, pianist Yulia Kouzova, (program TBA) at the Duncan Theatre.
The stellar early music group Les Arts Florissants comes to the Four Arts on March 16 with music by Monteverdi, Geminiani and Vivaldi, including the complete Four Seasons. Conductor Lahav Shani leads the Israel Philharmonic in the Scottish Symphony of Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony on March 20 at the Kravis Center, and the weekend of March 22 and 23 sees clarinetist Jon Manasse and bassoonist Whitney Crockett join the Lynn Philharmonia for Richard Strauss’s Duet-Concertino, while organist Tim Brumfield takes a solo spot in the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony.
On March 23, the great American violinist Hilary Hahn returns to South Florida to play the Violin Concerto of Erich Wolfgang Korngold with Gianandrea Noseda and the National Symphony. The Kravis program also includes Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the Four Black American Dances of the American composer Carlos Simon. The pianist Anne-Marie McDermott gives a recital of music by Bach and Brahms at the Four Arts that same day, and the Russian pianist Zlata Chochieva appears in recital March 26 at the last concert of the Duncan Theatre’s Classical Café series for the season.
On March 29, conductor Alastair Willis offers another in his New Directions series of concerts with The Symphonia. This appearance at the Studio at Mizner Park in Boca Raton takes the audience back to 1723, when J.S. Bach was in his last year at Cöthen before leaving for Leipzig to take up his job at the St. Thomas Church.
April: The piano duo of Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung play the Four Arts on April 2, offering music by Poulenc, Busoni, Ravel, Debussy and Piazzola. The next day at the Norton Museum, violinist Arnaud Sussmann, director of the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach, is joined by violist Paul Neubauer and cellist Paul Watkins in string trios by Mozart and Jean Françaix. At the same venue on April 6, the Quartetto di Cremona plays the Debussy String Quartet and Beethoven’s epic Quartet No. 15 (in A minor), as well as music by the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott sticks around after her Four Arts recital to join Gerard Schwarz and the Palm Beach Symphony for its final concert of the season on April 8, when she’ll play the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1. The Kravis concert begins with William Grant Still’s Threnody: In Memory of Jean Sibelius and closes with two French masterworks, Debussy’s La Mer and the second suite from Ravel’s score for the ballet Daphnis et Chloe.
Seraphic Fire closes its season April 10 at St. Gregory’s with music by the cloistered nuns and orphaned women of 18th-century Italy, including Chiara Cozzolani, Maria Perucona and Bianca Meda, plus the Magnificat of Vivaldi, who led the music at Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà. The British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason joins Miami Beach’s New World Symphony in the Cello Concerto No. 1 of Shostakovich at the Kravis Center on April 18. Conductor Stéphane Denève also leads the orchestral academy in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and music from John Williams’s score for the film The Book Thief.
The Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach ends its season April 24 at the Norton Museum with the beloved Trout Quintet of Franz Schubert, paired with the Piano Quintet No. 1 of the important mid-19th century pianist and composer Louise Farrenc. The Symphonia closes its season April 29 at the Studio at Mizner Park with music by Holst, Tchaikovsky, Jessie Montgomery, and a collaboration by Colin Jacobsen and Siamak Aghaei called Ascending Bird.