Greg Stepanich

Three orchestras, three strong programs

At last check, the Florida Philharmonic was still gone and sorely missed, but there are 15 concerts coming up from three local orchestras that offer a wide and even refreshing variety of music in the upcoming season.

I’ll drop in on a few of these in the months to come. It’s a good way to hear some fine local musicians, and to get acquainted with some music you don’t get a chance to hear all that often.

Lynn Philharmonia — The orchestra of the Lynn University conservatory in Boca Raton, led by Albert-George Schram, has the most traditional programs of the three orchestras. This mostly student band is sometimes buttressed by faculty members, and they’ve given some very good concerts in the past, notably a decent Shostakovich Tenth Symphony last season.

I’m most interested in the concerts of March 28 and 29, when the group will present Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber on a program with Stravinsky’s Petrushka and a concerto to be named later featuring the winner of the school’s concerto competition.

I don’t understand why Hindemith (who's pictured above) isn’t done more often hereabouts. The Weber metamorphosis is a crowd-pleaser, the Mathis der Maler symphony is wonderful, and the other day I listened hard to Der Schwanendreher and found it marvelous. (And a nice change of pace for violists from Harold in Italy.)

Three great symphonic standards are also in Lynn’s season: Beethoven’s Third, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth and Dvorak’s Eighth. They’ll also present a rare outing of Liszt’s Les Preludes, the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4 of Villa-Lobos, and Sir William Walton’s Portsmouth Point Overture, as well as other pieces. (More concert details here.)

Palm Beach Symphony — Veteran conductor Ray Robinson leads a group of area free-lancers in a series of concerts that will include Beethoven’s Mass in C, which I can’t recall being scheduled here in many a day.

The Beethoven mass, featuring the symphony chorale led by Florida Atlantic University’s Patricia Fleitas, is scheduled for April 5 on a program that also includes the student Mass (sometimes called Messa di Gloria) of Giacomo Puccini.

But I’m also interested in seeing the wonderful French pianist Philippe Entremont soloing and conducting a program of a Rossini overture (L’Italiana in Algeri), the G minor concerto of Mendelssohn, and the Second Concerto of Shostakovich (March 4).

Violinist Emil Chudnovsky solos in the Mendlessohn concerto on Feb. 12 (Copland’s Quiet City is also on the bill), and cellist Amit Peled appears Dec. 11 in the Haydn C major concerto. I’ll also be interested to see the Jan. 14 concert, which includes the Handel coronation anthem Zadok the Priest, and the Bach motet Jauchzet dem Herrn, with FAU’s Chamber Singers. (Details here for the symphony’s concerts.)

Boca Raton Philharmonic Symphonia — You have to admire this young group for its bold programming choices, which include works by Schnittke, Druckman and Britten. There also are old favorites such as the Mozart No. 40 and the Beethoven Seventh, but it’s the unusual pieces that will draw me this year.

The Nov. 11 concert features two orchestrations of Bach, one of them (O Mensch, bewein dein Sonde gruss, from the St. Matthew Passion) by Max Reger, and the other a four-movement reorchestration by Gustav Mahler of movements from two Bach orchestral suites. Lynn pianist Roberta Rust, just out with a disc of Debussy on Centaur, solos in the Schumann concerto.

On Dec. 16, violinist Giora Schmidt is on hand for the Prokofiev Second Concerto, a difficult but intriguing work, and Schnittke’s Moz-ART a la Haydn, a piece for two violins and strings in which the Russian composer makes theater and musical sport from Mozart and Haydn themes. The American composer Jacob Druckman’s Nor Spell Nor Charm (a 1990 work based on a Shakespeare-inspired song) shares the Jan. 13 bill with Strauss’ Bourgeois Gentilhomme suite, and pianist Daniel Alfred Wachs plays the Mozart Concerto No. 24.

I also am interested in the Feb. 10 concert, when soprano Ann McMahon Quintero joins the orchestra for two works by Britten — A Charm of Lullabies and Four British Folk Songs — on a concert with the Beethoven Seventh and Haydn’s No. 97, while on April 6, Darius Milhaud’s once-popular La Creation du Monde gets an outing on a program with Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (with soloists Misha Vitenson and Michael Klotz) and the Fifth Symphony of Schubert (its second perfomance this season; the Palm Beach also has it on the Feb. 12 concert). More details here.

There are quite a few must-sees here for me, and if the performances are as good as I think some of them will be, that will only whet the appetite for a permanent orchestra to be restarted here.