This weekend, the Houston Symphony Orchestra comes to town as part of a limited national tour, and it’s bringing the universe along with it. Conductor Hans Graf will lead the Houstonians (and the women of its chorus) in the great seven-part tone poem The Planets, by English composer Gustav Holst, accompanied by high-definition NASA images of our universe projected on a giant screen. It’s a merging of technology and music that some might find troubling – the emphasis will be on the images, not the orchestra – but it’s doubtless going to be a unique and impressive show. Also on the program is French composer Henri Dutilleux’s Timbres, Espace, Mouvement, and Stravinsky’s early Scherzo Fantastique (Op. 3). 8 pm Saturday at the Kravis Center (tickets: $25-$85), and 8 p.m. Sunday at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale (tickets: $25-$60). Call 832-7469 (Kravis) or 954-462-0222 (Broward).
Speaking of guest orchestras, the Cleveland Orchestra offers its second series of concerts starting tonight at the Knight Concert Hall in Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center. The groundbreaking Symphony No. 3 (in E-flat, Op. 55, Eroica) of Beethoven shares the bill with Symphony No. 2 (Age of Anxiety) of Leonard Bernstein. The concert opens with Giuseppe Verdi’s overture to his opera La Forza del Destino. Staff pianist Joela Jones solos in the Bernstein, and music director Franz Welser-Möst conducts. Tickets: $50-$160. Call 305-949-6722 or visit www.arshtcenter.org.
Closer to home, the Lynn Philharmonia, student ensemble at the Lynn University conservatory of music, presents its annual program of student concerto winners. These concerts are a good way to catch some local rising stars whom you might be catching at the beginning of major careers. The winners are pianist Natasa Stojanovska, cellist Aziz Sapaev, bassoonist Carlos Felipe Vina and violinist Maryna Yermolenko. Albert-George Schram conducts. 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday at the Roberts Theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton. Tickets: $30. Call 561-237-9000 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.
Further north, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra opens it chamber music series on Saturday morning at Stuart’s Blake Library with a free concert by violinist Leonid Sigal, ACO’s concertmaster. Sigal, accompanied by pianist Kimball Gallagher, has programmed an all-Russian concert featuring the beautiful Sonata No. 2 (in D, Op. 94b) by Sergei Prokofiev, the Divertimento of Stravinsky, and two pieces by Tchaikovsky: His Serenade Melancolique and Valse-Scherzo. The concert is free admission and starts at 11 a.m. in the library at 2351 S.E. Monterey Road. Call (866) 310-7521 or visit www.acomusic.org.
And speaking of female choruses: The women of Seraphic Fire, the Miami-based chamber choir, present a concert called Kisses of His Mouth: Music of Ecstasy. On the program are pieces by the 12th-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen (O Ignee Spiritus) and the American composer Samuel Barber (Heaven Haven). Also featured are pieces by Monteverdi, Couperin, Gluck, Mozart, Palestrina and John Dowland, plus a new work (Kisses of His Mouth) by Seraphic Fire guitarist Alvaro Bermudez, set to lines from The Song of Songs. The group performs at First United Methodist Church in Coral Gables at 7:30 p.m. tonight, at 8 p.m. Saturday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale, and at 4 p.m. Sunday at Miami Beach Community Church in Miami Beach. Tickets: $35. Call 305-285-9060 or visit www.seraphicfire.org. – G. Stepanich
Theater: Long before there was reality TV, director-choreographer Michael Bennett conceived a stage musical about 17 dancers vying for eight slots in a new fictional show, baring their innermost thoughts in a grueling marathon audition session. The show, of course, is A Chorus Line, which went on to win nine Tony awards and the Pulitzer Prize, becoming the longest-running show in Broadway history at one point. The 2006 revival, directed by Bennett’s co-choreographer Bob Avian, clones the original staging without losing any of the impact, as you can see at the Kravis Center beginning Tuesday, Feb. 2, for a week. Tickets are available at (561) 832-7469. – H. Erstein
Film: Basing his 2009 film The Girl on the Train (La Fille du Rer) on an actual case in which a young French woman falsely claimed she was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack, director Andre Téchiné (Changing Times) avoids the potential sensationalizing of the story for the more subtle, human behavior themes. Émilie Dequenne (Rosetta) is impressive as the girl, Jeanne, and Catherine Deneuve adds a touch of class as her mother. The film is divided into two segments — Circumstances and Consequences — sort of a French Law & Order. At Emerging Cinemas in Lake Worth and Mos’Art Theatre in Lake Park. – H. Erstein
Art: Beginning next Wednesday, a host of international dealers and collectors will converge at the Palm Beach County Convention Center for the American International Fine Art Fair (AIFAF). The AIFAF features more than 80 dealers from Europe and America, including objects from paintings to sculpture, antiquities and antiques.
It can be a great education to look at the wide spectrum of objects, talk to dealers and attend the many informative lectures that are offered throughout the seven-day fair.
Particularly of note are two talks: At noon Feb. 3, Geza von Habsburg, an art historian and Habsburg descendant, will present Habsburg Tapestries: An Exhibition at The Norton Museum of Art.
And at 4:30 p.m. Feb. 4, Sir Timothy Clifford, formerly of the Victoria and Albert and British museums, gives a talk called Collecting European Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculptures. – K. Deits