Longtime area residents can remember when the Florida Philharmonic launched its Beethoven on the Beach summer concerts in the mid-1990s, bringing welcome classical programming to the area in the hotter, emptier months.
Countertenor Ian Howell of Tableau Baroque.
The Philharmonic may be gone, but classical concerts are more plentiful this summer than they have been in some time. For instance, the fine Miami concert choir Seraphic Fire launched its first summer season this year, the most recent event of which concluded Sunday with a four-concert run by the young early-music ensemble Tableau Baroque, in a beautifully presented program of music associated with George Frideric Handel.
Next month, the organization hosts pianist Richard Dowling, who will offer a program of rarely heard American rags, which were dance music in their day but are closer in spirit to formal light classical music such as the waltzes of the Strauss family. He'll also play Gottschalk's The Banjo, a classic of American piano writing, and his own solo arrangement of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. (Details here.)
Meanwhile, the Coral Gables Congregational Church summer series has presented major artists such as violinist Anne Akiko Meyers in June and the great American classical guitarist Sharon Isbin two weeks ago. Tomorrow night, it turns to jazz with the young Kirghiz-American jazz pianist Eldar Djangirov, and on Aug. 13 welcomes Delfeayo Marsalis, the trombone-playing member of New Orleans' eminent Marsalis family.
Like classical music generally, opera tends to be heard in summer festivals rather than cities that already have opera companies. But this Friday and Saturday, Miami's Lyric
Opera presents Marina, the best-known opera of the Spanish composer Emilio Arrieta (1821-1894), pictured at right, who originally wrote it as a zarzuela. Well-known in Spain and Latin America, it's virtually unknown here, and this presents a good chance to see what it's about. YouTube clips abound, and here's one of Spanish tenor Rafael Lledo singing the drinking song from Act III.
Earlier this month, the Symphony of the Americas presented a series of concerts in Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties in tandem with the Remenyi Chamber Orchestra of Hungary, and at the end of next month, Mia Vassilev's young Miami Piano Circle offers piano music from the 1920-50s, including pieces by Leo Ornstein, Frank Martin and Alberto Ginastera, in a concert at the Lincoln Theatre in Miami Beach.
Up north in Palm Beach County, Keith Paulson-Thorp of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Delray Beach has expanded its regular music series to include summer concerts. In June, the Trillium Piano Trio performed infrequently heard, worthy music by Frank Bridge and Franz Berwald, followed in July by a concert of American music including pieces by Arthur Foote and Charles Griffes. In August, it's a jazz evening with singers Anita Smith and Adriana Samargia.
Members of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival.
Finally, one of the longest-running of all summer classical programs here is that of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, now in its 18th season and just about to wrap its fourth and final concert week beginning Friday with music by Saint-Saens, the American composer Jan Bach, Alfredo Casella, and the String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 87, of Mendelssohn, whose birth bicentenary has been celebrated on countless programs across the country and worldwide.
I've attended a number of these events already, and the audiences have been substantial and enthusiastic. Enterprising concert promoters might be pleasantly surprised with the response they get should they endeavor to add some more classical concerts to our summers.
