Although the upcoming season in classical music does not resemble in breadth of offerings the South Florida seasons of 30 or even 20 years ago, its core, centered around a few key venues, has remained solid and reliably compelling. The same is true of the 2025-26 season, which sees the return of major orchestras and soloists on tour, and absorbing offerings from homegrown groups.
Here is a look at the season, by month:
October: Patrick Dupré Quigley’s Miami concert choir Seraphic Fire, now in its 23rd season, brings its first program to Boca Raton’s St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church on Oct. 12, with associate conductor James Bass leading an audience-request afternoon that includes Jake Runestad’s “I Will Lift Mine Eyes,” Morten Lauridsen’s “O Magnum Mysterium,” and the piece that gave the choir its name, “Invocation,” by the Revolutionary War-era Boston singing master William Billings. Also at St. Gregory’s on Oct. 26 is an appearance by the Master Chorale of South Florida, led by Brett Karlin, in the Coronation Anthems of Handel and Mozart’s Coronation Mass.
November: The Lynn Philarmonia at Boca Raton’s Lynn Conservatory of Music presents its concerto competition winners Nov. 7 and 8 at the Wold Performing Arts Center, featuring students in concert works by Dohnanyi, Nielsen, Lalo and Tchaikovsky. Palm Beach Symphony opens its Masterworks series Nov. 9 at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach with pianist Shelley Berg, former dean of the University of Miami Frost School of Music, performing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, still sounding fresh after 101 years. Conductor Gerard Schwarz leads the band in Gershwin’s An American in Paris, Respighi’s Pines of Rome, and the Prelude and Quadruple Fugue of the American composer Alan Hovhaness. The six motets by Johann Sebastian Bach are an Everest of choral writing, and Seraphic Fire has tackled them occasionally throughout its career. The choir presents all six with Quigley leading the Seraphic Fire Period Orchestra four times, the last on the afternoon of Nov. 16 at St. Gregory’s in Boca.
The Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach opens its new season Nov. 20 at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach with a varied program featuring Beethoven’s early Septet and his so-called Eyeglasses Duet for violin and cello, Nielsen’s Serenata in vano, and an arrangement for septet of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. And on Nov. 23 at St. Gregory’s, The Symphonia Boca Raton opens its new season under conductor Alastair Willis with Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis’s Musica Celestis, and the Organ Concerto of Francis Poulenc, with soloist Tim Brumfield.
December: The Handel and Haydn Society, with the exception of the U.S. Marine Band, is the oldest continually operating musical group in the country, having been founded in the distant year of 1815 in Boston. And ever since 1853, it’s mounted Christmas performances of Handel’s oratorio Messiah. This year, not long after H&H presents Messiah back home in Boston, the group comes to the Kravis Center on Dec. 3 to bring the tradition to South Florida. That same day, Canadian Brass opens the Society of the Four Arts season in Palm Beach with a concert of Christmas music. Still another Christmas tradition follows at the Four Arts on Dec. 7, when the musicians of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center perform all six of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.
At the Kravis’s Rinker Playhouse on Dec. 10, a string quintet from the Young Concert Artists group launches this season’s Young Artists Classical Series, while at St. Gregory’s in Boca, Seraphic Fire presents its annual program of Christmas music. The next day, Dec. 11, guitarist Jason Vieaux, a familiar face on the area’s classical stages, joins the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach for a program of string quartet and guitar pieces featuring music by Hadyn, Boccherini, Paganini, Villa-Lobos and others at the Norton Museum of Art. The veteran pianist Misha Dichter returns to the Kravis stage Dec. 16 for a Palm Beach Symphony concert featuring Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; also on the program are works by Rimsky-Korsakov (Snow Maiden Suite), Falla (The Three-Cornered Hat), and the American composer Gabriela Lena Frank (Elegia Andina). And on Dec. 21, the legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman returns for his annual end-of-year Kravis recital with pianist Rohan de Silva; this time, it’s accompanied by a multimedia show recounting Perlman’s life and career.
January: ArcoStrum, the duo of Strauss Shi and TY Zhang, present a program of music for violin, classical and electric guitars, and the traditional Chinese instruments known as the erhu and dizi, on Jan. 7 at the Rinker Playhouse. That same afternoon, the Chicago Piano Quartet, a combo of two other Chicago-based chamber groups, opens the Duncan Theatre’s Classical Café series, held at Stage West in Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth Beach. Art song recitals are relatively rare these days, which is why an appearance by American soprano Angel Blue on Jan. 11 at the Four Arts is worth noting. Blue has scheduled song groups by Fauré, Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss and Lee Hoiby; she and pianist Bryan Wagorn also will present songs by Harold Arlen, Kurt Weill and Gershwin, along with a set of Black spirituals.
The fine American cellist Alisa Weilerstein performs Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Palm Beach Symphony on Jan. 13 at the Kravis. Music by Daniel Asia (Gateways) and Richard Strauss (Alpine Symphony) also is on the program. The English pianist Paul Lewis presents sonatas by Mozart as well as works by Debussy and Poulenc in a recital Jan. 14 at the Four Arts, while conductor Jason Max Ferdinand leads music from the American Gospel tradition for Seraphic Fire on Jan. 15 at St. Gregory’s. The following day, Jan. 16, trumpeter Pacho Flores solos with Mexico’s Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería at the Kravis, playing concertos by Haydn and Paquito d’Rivera. Conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto also leads music by Revueltas, Ginastera and Márquez. On Jan. 17, Britain’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Vasily Petrenko, comes to the Kravis with Australian violinist Ray Chen soloing in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto; Nielsen’s Helios Overture is on the program along with the Sibelius Second Symphony.
The Brentano String Quartet comes to the Four Arts on Jan. 21 for an all-Beethoven concert that includes the Harp Quartet (Op. 74); that same afternoon, violinist Melissa White and pianist Peter Dugan team for a recital in the Classical Café series in Lake Worth Beach. the next day, flutist Sooyun Kim joins the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach for a concert of flute-oriented Baroque music at Bethesda-by-the-Sea. Pieces by Purcell, Couperin and Telemann are among the works on offer. A world premiere is on tap Jan. 24 and 25 at The Studio at Mizner Park in Boca Raton when The Symphonia presents Ebenus, a clarinet concerto co-composed by Syrian clarinetist Kinan Amzeh and French conductor and composer Christophe Chagnard. The program also includes the Ninth Symphony of Dvořák, in a chamber orchestra arrangement by Jason Stephens.
February: The Four Arts opens the month with a three-concert celebration of the 250th birthday of the United States. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presents music by Gottschalk, Copland and Bernard Herrmann on Feb. 1; pieces by Barber, Amy Beach and Dvořák on Feb. 4; and works by George Antheil, Paul Schoenfield, John Adams, Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin on Feb. 8. Also kicking off the month Feb. 1 is the Cleveland Orchestra under its conductor Franz Welser-Möst. The Kravis concert opens with Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony and closes with Shostakovich’s powerful Symphony No. 11. On Feb. 4 at the Duncan Theatre’s Stage West, pianist Ilya Yakushev presents a recital for the Classical Café series. On Jan. 6, the Jacksonville Symphony is joined by tenor Limmie Pulliam for a concert at the Kravis of songs by Richard Strauss and arias by Puccini and Leoncavallo; conductor Courtney Lewis also will lead the Duval Countians in overtures by Wagner and Tchaikovsky. Pulliam follows that appearance Feb. 8 with a recital at the Kravis of Black spirituals, accompanied by the pianist Mark Markham.
The Flagler Museum on Palm Beach opens its 2026 five-concert season with New York’s Isidore String Quartet on Feb. 10 and follows it Feb. 17 with the Belgian duo of violinist Jolente De Maeyer and pianist Nikolaas Kende. The exciting English pianist Martin James Bartlett, who won the BBC Young Musician of the Year honor in 2014, comes to the Rinker Playhouse on Feb. 18 for a recital. The Danish String Quartet arrives at the Four Arts on Feb. 25 for a concert of music by Mozart, Stravinsky, and the Op. 130 quartet of Beethoven. Cellist Gary Hoffman is the special guest at the Feb. 26 concert by the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach, featuring music by Mozart and Dvořák; it will be held at the Kravis Center. The Lynn Conservatory’s New Music Festival celebrates its 20th year Feb. 28 at the Wold Center with a world premiere of a piano concerto by Glen Cortese, played by festival organizer Lisa Leonard.
March: Russian violinist Vadim Repin solos in the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Palm Beach Symphony on March 2 at the Kravis Center; the program also includes two works by the American composer Paul Moravec, one of them a world premiere, Lullaby, commissioned expressly for the orchestra. Conductor Gerard Schwarz also leads the orchestra in Brahms’s Third Symphony. The Poulenc Trio, a threesome of oboe, bassoon and piano, visits the Flagler on March 3, and on March 4, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is up at the Kravis next, with the great Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin in a concerto by Mozart (No. 12, K. 414) and arrangements of Schubert by Liszt (Wanderer Fantasy) and Heribert Breuer (a chamber symphony drawn from the Piano Sonata in B-flat, D. 960). The Vienna Philharmonic returns to the Kravis for a two-day stay led by Andris Nelsons. The March 8 matinee includes Mozart’s Linz Symphony and the Sixth Symphony of Dvořák; on the evening of March 9, the Chinese superstar pianist Lang Lang takes center stage for the Third Piano Concerto of Béla Bartók, with Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony also on the program. Back on March 8, the Symphonia stops in at St. Gregory’s with Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and the Emperor Concerto of Beethoven, with pianist Lindsey Garritson. On March 10, Boston’s Trio Gaia plays the Flagler, with music by Szymanowski, Ravel and the French composer Charlotte Sohy.
Miami Beach’s New World Symphony makes its annual trek up Interstate 95 for a concert at the Kravis, this one featuring the splendid violinist Augustin Hadelich on March 13 in the Violin Concerto by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Conductor Stéphane Denève also programs two pieces of Korngold’s movie music (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Sea-Hawk) along with Max Steiner’s music for King Kong. The concert closes with Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. At Bethesda-by-the-Sea on March 18, the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach welcomes the Ehnes String Quartet, led by the Canadian violinist James Ehnes, a Florida resident. Works by Beethoven and Schubert are planned, and joined by CMSPB artistic director Arnaud Sussmann, the String Quintet No. 2 of Felix Mendelssohn. Also on March 18, the Oak Trio (pianist Evren Ozel, violinist Nathan Amaral and cellist Leland Ko) closes the Duncan’s Classical Café series at Stage West in an afternoon concert.
Lynn Conservatory dean Jon Robertson, who is retiring this school year, takes up the baton March 21 and 22 at the Wold Center for a Lynn Philharmonia concert featuring pianist Roberta Rust in the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Seraphic Fire’s Candlelight concert is heard March 22 at St. Gregory’s with guest conductor Arianne Abela in music ranging from Hildegard, Monteverdi and Palestrina to Eric Whitacre and Finland’s Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, whose Canticum Calamatatis Maritimae commemorates the sinking of the car-transport ship MS Estonia in 1994, which claimed the lives of 852 people. On March 23, violinist Simone Porter is in the spotlight with the Buffalo Philharmonic in the Scottish Fantasy of Max Bruch. Conductor JoAnn Falletta also has programmed the First Symphony of Brahms and the lovely miniature The Banks of Green Willow, by the English composer George Butterworth, who was killed in the trenches of World War I.
On March 24, the Flagler Museum’s 2026 season ends with a concert by eight-string guitarist Paul Galbraith. At the Rinker Playhouse on March 25, two Curtis Institute graduates, flutist Julin Cheung and pianist Kārlis Bukovsis, present a recital on the Young Artists series. Meanwhile, the Master Chorale of South Florida presents a concert March 29 called “Stephen Sondheim and Friends,” in which the community chorus celebrates the music of the late Broadway icon at the Wold Performing Arts Center on the campus of Lynn University in Boca Raton.
April: Seraphic Fire closes its season April 9 at St. Gregory’s with a “Surround Sound” concert that replicates the aural glories of Venice’s St. Mark’s Basilica; the program includes the Ave Maria of Monteverdi, who was the music director at St. Mark’s for 30 years in the early 17th century. That same day at the Kravis, duo-pianists Wu Qian and Jujo Pohjonen perform music by Bach, Mozart and Gershwin, as well as the thrilling Symphonic Dances of Rachmaninoff. The Symphonia wraps its season April 11 and 12 at The Studio at Mizner Park with one of conductor Alastair Willis’s New Directions concerts; expect cosplay and the Haffner Symphony of Mozart. On April 15 at the Four Arts, the Shanghai Quartet offers music by Haydn, Dvořák, Gershwin and the eminent Chinese composer Tan Dun.
The Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski performs Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the Kravis Center with the Palm Beach Symphony on April 19. The all-Russian program includes Stravinsky’s early Scherzo Fantastique and Shostakovich’s popular Fifth Symphony. Also on April 19 and April 20 at the Wold Center, cellist David Finckel solos in Strauss’s Don Quixote for a Lynn Philharmonia concert led by Guillermo Figueroa; the concert also includes the First Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich. The Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach ends its season April 26 at the Norton Museum with Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals plus the Florida premiere of a work by the composer and pianist Michael Stephen Brown calling attention to the plight of endangered species.
May: The Palm Beach Symphony ends its season May 17 at the Kravis with the great pianist Emanuel Ax in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22. The afternoon concert opens with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and closes with Gustav Holst’s tone poem The Planets. That same evening at St. Gregory’s, the Master Chorale presents Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered as well as a world premiere, The Sky Remembers, by the University of North Texas professor Marques Garrett.
Also of note: The Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale and the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami have classical music series that often include the same performers appearing at the Kravis. But there are others: The Arsht presents tenor Juan Diego Flórez (Feb. 15), the Philadelphia Orchestra (Feb. 19) and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Joshua Bell (March 14). The Broward Center presents regular concerts by two regional groups, the Symphony of the Americas and the South Florida Symphony Orchestra.
The New World Symphony, the orchestral academy based at the New World Center built by Frank Gehry in Miami Beach, presents a host of interesting programs throughout the season. Among the highlights: Manfred Honeck leading two performances of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony Dec. 13 and 14 (the Dec. 13 concert is also a WallCast that can be watched from outside); John Adams leading a program of his music Jan. 17 and 18, including a new piano concerto for Vikingur Ólafsson; and baritone and composer Davóne Tines in his own Concerto No. 2: Anthem on a program with music by Jessie Montgomery and Margaret Bonds (Feb. 21 and 22).
Finally, the Cleveland Orchestra’s annual Miami season features two performances of Verdi’s titanic Requiem on Jan. 23 and 24 at the Knight Concert Hall in the Arsht Center; Franz Welser-Most is joined by soprano Asmik Grigorian, mezzo Deniz Uzun, tenor Joshua Guerrero and bass Tareq Namzi along with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. Itzhak Perlman is the guest for a film music evening Jan. 28 at the Knight Concert Hall led by Taichi Fukumura, while pianist Yefim Bronfman solos in the Beethoven Emperor Concerto on Jan. 30 and 31. And on March 27 and 28, violinist Sergey Khachatryan plays the Sibelius Violin Concerto on a program led by Rafael Payare that closes with Stravinsky’s epochal The Rite of Spring.