South Florida Classical Review

When the Master Chorale of South Florida opens its fifth season this fall, it will also mark a new chapter in the organization’s history. The baton has been passed to Joshua Habermann (left), who takes over as artistic director from Chorale founder Jo-Michael Scheibe. Ironically, the two men have swapped states, with Scheibe departing to his new post at the University of Southern California and Habermann coming to Florida after 12 years as assistant conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and as director of choral activities at San Francisco State University. To make the succession even more symmetrical, Habermann has also assumed Scheibe’s former post as director of choral studies at the University of Miami.

Habermann will open the Master Chorale’s season by leading the chorus and Boca Raton Symphonia in Mendelssohn’s heaven-storming oratorio, Elijah, November 14-16 at venues in Pompano Beach, Miami and Boca Raton. The Chorale will join forces with the Empire Brass for a program of holiday music Dec. 12-14, and close its season with American Tapestry, a program of homegrown choral music April 24-26. In addition to its three subscription programs, the Master Chorale will be the guest choir when Itzhak Perlman leads the Russian National Orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at Festival of the Arts BOCA on March 15.

Tickets for the Master Chorale’s concerts are $30, $35 at the door. Call 954-418-6232 or visit http://www.masterchoraleofsouthflorida.org/.

If you love Itzhak Perlman, you’ll definitely like the 2009 installment of the Boca Festival of the Arts, which will fete the celebrated violinist in honor of his 50th year of performances in the U.S.

The musical component of the ten-day festival will feature Perlman as soloist, conductor and chamber musician in an array of familiar repertoire. On March 7, Perlman will perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Russian National Orchestra led by Mikhail Pletnev. He will present a chamber music evening with his Perlman Music Program March 8, followed by a concert of klezmer music March 12. For a grand finale, Perlman will conduct the Russian National Orchestra and Master Chorale of South Florida in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 to close the festival March 15.

In other events, Pletnev will conduct the RNO in an all-Beethoven program March 10 featuring the mighty Fifth Symphony, with Jeremy Denk as soloist in the Piano Concerto No. 5. And on March 13 conductor Alondra de la Parra leads the Russian musicians in an evening of Latin-American music. Other artists and programming details are yet to be announced. All performances are at the Centre for the Arts at Mizner Park in Boca Raton. Call 866-571-2787 or visit http://www.festivaloftheartsboca.org/.

Vocal programs of isolated opera arias are often the musical equivalent of a chicken salad lunch---it sates the appetite, there's nothing heavy, and usually no surprises.

What looked on paper like a chicken-salad aria event by Miami Lyric Opera offered a strong evening of vocalism that rose to surprising heights Saturday night at the Colony Theater, closing the fourth season of Raffaele Cardone's fledgling company on an up note.

Saturday's program offered a more unified lineup than usual, leading off with extended scenes from Don Pasquale and Manon. With the safety-first conservative repertoire served up by the two large regional opera companies, Massenet is encountered locally about as often as Wozzeck.

So it was doubly pleasurable to hear the generous selection of Manon excerpts, which also provided several of the evening's high points. Massenet's tale of the wealth-loving woman of leisure who leads herself and the Count des Grieux to a tragic end is chock full of some of Massenet's finest music, remarkable in its range and variety.

The title role received spectacular advocacy from Susana Diaz as Manon. Glammed up in blond hair and slinky evening gown, it's hard to believe this was the same singer who was so convincing as a virginal, innocent Gilda a year ago in Rigoletto. At times, one wanted a smoother legato and more body in the middle voice, particularly with Je suis encore. But Diaz showed herself more than capable of taking on the demanding role, displaying blazing top notes and impressive agility in a glorious account of Manon's Gavotte, and plumbing emotional depth in a concentrated Adieu, notre petite table.

Jorge Pita was an equally worthy des Griux, bringing yearning ardor to Il Reve and dramatic power to Ah! fuyez. So compelling and well sung was the ensuing scene by both artists, that it was a bit disappointing not to hear the rest of the opera. Cardone provided a teaser that the company may present a complete Manon next season. We live in hope.

Lighter fare was encountered with the opening excerpts from Donizetti's Don Pasquale. Beverly Coulter was a lively presence as Norina, conveying the charm of the mercurial schemer and showing impressive technical gleam in Quel guardo and comic interplay in the duet with Daniel Snodgrass's Malatesta. Coulter's ringing top notes were also heard to fine effect in the Lucia sextet and music from Bellini's La Sonnambula, with lovely tone and coloratura dazzle in Amina's showpiece Ah! non giunge.

David Pereira possesses a refined if slender lyric tenor. Though sensitively floated, Faust's Salut demeure requires more weight and a firmer attack, but Pereira's elegant voice was well suited to Ernesto's arias from Pasquale.

Diego Baner wielded his imposing bass with finesse and keen dramatic point in arias from Don Carlo and Simon Boccanegra. Baritone Snodgrass demonstrated idiomatic Italianate legato and showed versatility with the buffo bel canto as well as a fine account of Albert's aria from Werther. Mezzo-soprano Lissette Jimenez displayed her rich tone and admirable technique in arias from La Favorita and Cavalleria Rusticana.

Over a long program, pianist Paul Schwartz was an exemplary partner, alertly supporting the singers and providing faultless accompaniment. The only blot on the evening was the audible amped-up bass from Segafredo Café next door, which provided an unwonted backbeat to Massenet and Donizetti.

Miami Lyric Opera will open its 2009 season on March 26 with Bellini's I Puritani. Also to be heard next year are Bizet's Carmen, Emilio Arrieta's Marina and a double bill of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Puccini's Suor Angelica. Visit http://www.miamilyricopera.org/.

Video: Susana Diaz as Gilda singing Caro nome in Miami Lyric Opera's Rigoletto, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qaQ-k_-0A

South Florida’s opera season is months away, but Miami Lyric Opera will offer a summer sampler this weekend with a showcase of popular arias. The concert features several local singers who have performed in MLO productions including Beverly Coulter, Susana Diaz, Lissette Jimenez, Jorge Pita, and Diego Baner, in music of Verdi, Mascagni, Massenet, Gounod, and Donizetti.

Concert time is 8 p.m. Saturday at the Colony Theater, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. $30, $25 for students with I.D. http://www.miamilyricopera.org/; 305-674-1040.

I waited so long to write about the Jascha Heifetz Sony Original Jacket Collection ($79.98 at Amazon) that the label has since released three more sets of Eugene Ormandy, Montserrat Caballe, and another Leonard Bernstein box, which will be reviewed soon. In the meantime, here’s a brief take on the Heifetz set.

Aficionados will know these recordings intimately but younger collectors will want to snap up this box before it disappears. These extraordinary violin performances remain touchstones and have never sounded better than in these newly remastered versions. This limited edition 10-CD box concentrates largely on Heifetz’s concerto recordings and most of the essentials are here: magisterial Brahms and Tchaikovsky with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, Beethoven and Mendelssohn with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony, and the stunning recording of the Korngold concerto, a work which, though not written for him, seems eminently suited to Heifetz’s bright, diamond-like timbre.

Interpretively, the legendary violinist could be cool to the point of icy---as with his speed race through the slow movement of the Sibelius concerto. But at his best, Heifetz’s sinew and sweetness, vibrant tone, and astonishing technical security remain unequaled. Heiftez shined best, I feel, in his native Russian repertoire---Prokofiev’s irony and sharp angles suit him particularly well. My guilty pleasure of the set is the Glazunov concerto, which while not quite a masterpiece, is melodic, delightful and exhilarating (a brief bowing slip in the finale shows that even Heifetz was human). Also included are the complete Bach solo sonatas and partitas and the 1972 Los Angeles recital with Brooks Smith.

Columbia Masterworks vintage cover art was not exactly gallery material but the series’ exacting miniature reproductions of its albums are captivating and the box offer a shelf-saving way to nab some essential Heifetz.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=kFaq9kTlcaY&feature=related

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“He volunteered with his time in many, many things. He was so dedicated to the entertainment industry," said Harris. "He was an icon in his own way. He leaves a legacy that will be a very hard act to follow.”

Like all good critics, Jack was an enthusiast, and never tired of the daily beat coverage. At his retirement party last month, outgoing Sun-Sentinel arts and entertainment editor Robin Berkowitz noted how Jack would review the umpteenth local production of Fiddler on the Roof with the same zeal and seriousness as if he were hearing it for the first time.

At busy peak season, when critics a decade and a half younger than him had turned to glassy-eyed zombies, Jack would be in the office most of the day, writing, conducting interviews, and editing, before dashing off to yet another performance without missing a beat or a word of complaint.

“On matters of arts and entertainment in South Florida, Jack was authoritative in a way that may be disappearing,” writes Sean Piccoli, Sun-Sentinel pop music critic in an email reminiscence. “The trend nowadays is to offload our actual memory of people, places and events to Web sites like Google and Wikipedia. Not Jack. Tech-savvy as he was, he insisted on carrying his institutional knowledge inside of his head. Jack wrote with a very full awareness of the region's cultural life, and its development over the decades that he lived and worked here, and I was always awed by the extent of his knowledge."

Sean also points out that the collision of volatile, passionate personalities in any newsroom's arts and entertainment department needed the unruffled center of gravity that Jack’s presence provided.

“Jack went about his work with exemplary patience and calm,” writes Sean. “A noisy newsroom is a wonderful thing, but there has to be someone in that setting to balance out the cacophony. In our corner of the Sun Sentinel, Jack was that guy--- rational, gentle and quietly amused at the hysterics occasionally exhibited by some of his colleagues.”

Jack’s energy never seemed to flag, whether keeping a daunting pace of theater coverage, the vast amount of time he devoted to the Carbonells, or the hundreds of hours freely volunteered to his condo board and church. For all his hectic scheduling, he somehow managed to maintain a surgically neat desktop compared to the mass of papers, press releases, CDs and coffee-stained effluvia of the ink-stained wretches around him.

John Charles Zink was born March 7, 1947 in Lorain, Ohio, a steel and ship-building enclave on Lake Erie west of Cleveland, the oldest of six children. Jack graduated from St. Mary High School, where he was active in the drama club, debate teams, intramural basketball, and started at tight end in varsity football.

Jack began his journalism career as an intern at The Elyria Chronicle-Telegram in 1968, where among his varied roles was covering the inaugural season of the Blossom Music Center and the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer concert series. He attended the University of Dayton before transferring to Ohio State University’s journalism program. Following graduation from OSU in 1969, Jack took the first of his journalism jobs in Florida where he was editor of the Miami Herald’s Lively Arts in Broward County. Two years later he moved to the Fort Lauderdale News as entertainment editor for nearly a decade (1971-80) and then to a two-year stint (1983-1985) in the same position for the Palm Beach Post & Evening Times.

At this time, South Florida entertainment was evolving from a refuge of creaky vaudeville and supper clubs to a growing pop, theater and classical music scene. Among those he met and profiled were Janis Joplin, Dustin Hoffman and Luciano Pavarotti.

In 1987, Jack returned to the role of theater critic at the Sun-Sentinel, where he also took on the new role of cultural affairs reporter/commentator, where his accumulated knowledge and experience of the region’s arts scene would prove invaluable.

Over his long career Jack covered virtually everything that could be considered entertainment—as well as some things that barely qualified: theater news and reviews, film, television, books, classical music, opera, dance, nightclubs and popular music. He received the Sun-Sentinel's highest award, the Fred Pettijohn Award, as well as the George Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, voted by members of the arts and entertainment industry. He was Florida correspondent for Varity and Daily Variety from 1977 to 1995. When I left the Sun-Sentinel in the fall of 2006 he eagerly took upon his already teeming plate, the classical music beat, gracefully handling reviews of Palm Beach Opera and Florida Grand Opera and coordinating an ambitious schedule of freelance coverage.

While he was best known as theater critic and prolific reviewer, Jack was proud of his reporting and investigative work. A series of reports and columns about management at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts prompted the Florida State Legislature to overhaul the center’s management in the early 1990s. Later, his reporting on the Florida Entertainment Commission proved instrumental in the Legislature’s decision to dissolve that agency. But it is his work as founder, executive director and guiding light of the nationally recognized Carbonell Awards, South Florida’s regional arts honors, which may be his greatest professional legacy.

As with all critics, Jack had his share of memorable stories When a translator failed to show up, he had a friendly but worthless interview with a young unknown Italian tenor who was about to make his American debut in Miami yet could not speak a word of English---Pavarotti. He interviewed Kirk Douglas while the actor un-self-consciously sunned nude on his hotel balcony. And, once after a negative review, an enraged Robert Goulet called the newsroom and told Jack he was coming over to “punch your lights out.”

A young hot-headed actor went further than threats over the phone. Following a tepid review of a new street theater company, the furious actor went to the Sun-Sentinel newsroom to confront Jack. (These were pre-security days when anyone could simply walk into a city newsroom.) Unaware that the theater critic had just left to get a sandwich around the corner, the outraged actor demanded to see Jack and, when told he wasn’t there, erupted and attacked the metro editor on duty. The police were called, and Jack returned to the office, bewildered at seeing the now-contrite thespian being hauled away in cuffs, crying, “Jack, I didn’t mean it!”

Accomplished and prolific as his theater writing was, Jack’s occasional article off the theater beat produced some terrific work. His essays for the Sun-Sentinel’s Travel section on his trip to Egypt and, especially, a summer vacation visiting Civil War battlefields with Cynthia---Jack was a lifelong Civil War buff-----were gems of observant reporting and evocative writing.

But it was Jack's kindness, good humor and unfailing personal and professional generosity that will remain in the memory of his colleagues. He was a sounding board and source of advice for younger reporters dealing with the inevitable office conflicts and battles with editors. And in the media/entertainment milieu in transient South Florida---where duplicity, mendacity, and getting ahead at any cost are often the normal state of things---Jack's honesty, integrity, and fundamental decency remain touchstones now and always.

Jack is survived by his wife Cynthia, and daughters Derika Jeanne Zink and Susan Fuguet, from a previous marriage to Susan Haskell-Hall who died in 1983. He was also a loving stepfather to Cynthia’s son Vincent and daughter Mary.

A private funeral service for family and close friends will be held Saturday morning. A public memorial tribute will take place 3 p.m. Monday at the Parker Playhouse, 707 NE 8th St., Fort Lauderdale. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to St. Ambrose Episcopalian Church, 2250 SW 31st Ave., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312 or to The Carbonell Awards, Inc. at P.O. Box 14211, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33302-4211.

Notes from a week of opera in Santa Fe:

• For opera fans who have yet to make the trip, a sojourn to New Mexico for Santa Fe Opera’s festival is a must-do before you die. The repertoire is varied, and casting and performance quality consistently high. Not to mention the spectacular venue with open side and back views that showcase the desert sky during performances.



• For South Florida residents, it offers a week of escape from the godless summer heat and humidity. The weather is balmy and pleasant with a cooling breeze---thunderstorms and flash flooding apart one day I was there. Add fine restaurants, intriguing art galleries, reasonable hotel rates and tickets that start at $26 and it’s a cultural pilgrimage that won’t break the bank.



• Having grown accustomed to the sullen monosyllabic rudeness of South Florida, it was striking to encounter the Santa Fe locals in restaurants, hotels and stores who are open, friendly and speak in complete, intelligible sentences. A Miami friend, who noted the same social contrast, said, “I may move here permanently.”



• In addition to the opera, the city also offers an ambitious and venturesome summer chamber music festival. Under artistic director Marc Neikrug, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival presents several events over a five-week span. I caught a terrific program by the trio Real Quiet, that included Elliott Carter’s Cello Sonata; an intriguing work, Real Loud, written for the trio by young composer Huang Ruo; and the premiere of Serenatas by Kaija Saariaho.
  The tall flame-haired Finnish composer was a prominent presence this summer due to the American premiere of Saariaho’s second opera, Adriana Mater. I had issues with the opera’s libretto and static quality, yet, as with her music for Adriana, Serenatas is consistently rewarding. Cast in five movements that can be played in any sequence, the music explores the full range and limits of the instruments but with an elegant, searching cool Nordic lyricism, suffused with a longing melancholy and extremely subtle dynamics and colors. Cellist Felix Fan, pianist Andrew Russo and percussionist David Cassin gave Serenatas sterling advocacy with playing of laser-like concentration.
  The 37th season of Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in 2009 will run from July 19-August 24 and offer premieres of commissioned works by George Tsontakis, Gunther Schuller, and Mark Anthony Turnage. http://www.santafechambermusic.com/; 505-982-1890.


• The production of Verdi’s Falstaff had a quiet debut by a young man from a prominent Santa Fe couple. The silent role of Robin the page was charmingly played by Trevor Wilson, son of Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame of CIA/Robert Novak fame.



• Santa Fe Opera’s 2009 season will offer Verdi’s La Traviata, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, Gluck’s Alceste and the world premiere of Paul Moravec’s The Letter. Tickets are $26-$170. http://www.santafeopera.org/; 800-280-4654.
  
  

[Pictured: David Daniels as Radamisto, kneeling, and Luca Pisaroni as Tiridate. Photo by Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera.]

A bit of background: In June Dan Chang reported in the Miami Herald that the Concert Association of Florida has made an offer to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts proposing that the center take over the financially troubled presenting organization.

Feeling strongly that an essential part of a newspaper critic’s role is to provide analysis and spark debate on crucial developments on one’s beat, I wrote a column examining the issues raised by the offer. To make a long story short, the Herald declined to publish the column. Because there has been no change in the situation and I feel the issues are still germane and of great significance to the local music scene, I am posting that column today.

Last week the Miami Herald's Dan Chang reported that the Concert Association of Florida had made an overture to the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts to, in essence, take over the financially troubled organization.

The proposal from Concert Association board chairman Robert Hudson requests that the Arsht Center assume all responsibilities for accounting, marketing, ticketing, and production operations. It also calls for the Arsht Center to co-produce a number of events in which the center would assume all financial risk, while most of the revenues would flow to the Concert Association. Further, Hudson requests that the Arsht Center grant naming rights and other advantages to the Concert Association without the center sharing in the financial benefit.

Finally, three "key employees"---CEO Albert Milano, artistic director Rise Kern and development director Marcia Rabinowitz would keep their jobs while the rest of the staff would lose theirs.

Lawrence Wilker, interim chief executive of the Arsht Center, expressed sympathy for the Concert Association's plight and said he would be meeting with them soon to see if there is some way the center can help. But a more realistic response to Hudson's proposal would be, "What in the world are you guys smoking?"

It makes eminent sense for the Arsht Center to assume control of the floundering Concert Association. Before the downtown arts center existed, Miami needed a highly motivated dynamo like [founder and long-time president] Judy Drucker to present classical artists via a stand-alone entity. With the Concert Association's Miami events presented at the Arsht Center's Knight Concert Hall there's no longer any practical or economic reason to have a middleman.

But it makes absolutely zero sense for Wilker to accept Hudson's heavily slanted terms---not only for the obvious, woefully unbalanced costs/benefits breakdown ---but for institutionalizing a leadership whose record is incomplete at best, and on the artistic front, little short of disastrous.

No one is exaggerating the organization's problems with a lingering deficit variously estimated at from $2.4 to $3 million, an aging, shrinking subscriber base, and management at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts that seems disdainful of providing available dates to book classical events in Fort Lauderdale. Add the plunging economy and saving the Concert Association is an undeniably daunting task.

Hudson claims that the Concert Association has reduced its perennial long-term debt by $500,000 and that increased ticket sales and more than $3 million in contributions have helped the organization to end the 2007-2008 season in the black by $210,000. Yet even if the financial picture is as rosy as described, Milano's record on artistic matters is considerably less inspiring.

Next season looks decent on paper, but the majority of the major classical events---the New York Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and Kirov Orchestra---were booked by Drucker before her exit last summer. The initiatives and additional programming served up by Milano and Kern have shown a remarkable lack of knowledge of basic classical presentation as well as their audience's preferences---most prominently in the disastrous Florida Symphony project announced with great fanfare in January and then quickly dropped three months later. Anyone could anticipate that Broward Center subscribers would resent paying international-orchestra prices to hear a local freelance ensemble.

Miami is not lacking in presenters of pops, jazz and Latin music, not least the Arsht Center itself, and Milano's moves have shown a blithe indifference to the fact that classical programming has been the Concert Association's raison d'etre for forty years. By changing its orientation to include mixed programs of classical and pops, world music and jazz, the Concert Association isn't "broadening" its profile but diluting it. You don't build a larger audience for classical music by doing less classical music.

For four decades, under Drucker, the Concert Association of Florida never wavered in its mission of presenting world-class orchestras and classical artists (as well as dance). Concert Association subscribers---the foundation of the organization's audiences ---have said loud and clear that they don't want "crossover," local freelance orchestras, or watered-down pops concerts, as evidenced by the numbers of people either not renewing in Broward or renewing only for the five classical events.

With its precarious financial situation, shrinking subscriber base and management that seems anxious to let someone else take over all responsibilities---while they keep their salaries----it's entirely possible that the 2008-2009 season will be the final one for the Concert Association of Florida as an independent presenter of events. And it will most likely be the last season for the organization's series in Fort Lauderdale, where the Broward Center has shown indifference to providing dates for classical events for many years.

An Arsht Center takeover of the Concert Association could serve to shore up the organization financially as well as artistically. Potential conflicts with other resident groups and duplicative programming could be dealt with more easily and overall coordination more efficiently handled.

But it is crucial that the Arsht Center demonstrate a serious, lasting commitment to presenting quality classical repertoire unlike its sister venue in Fort Lauderdale. In addition to more innovative marketing that will stem the dwindling subscribe base, it's essential that a programming director with a wide and deep knowledge of classical repertoire and practical experience be hired, preferably with an arts center background.

A reconstituted Arsht Center/Concert Association partnership could continue the organization's historical tradition of bringing world-class orchestras and solo artists and even expanding it, possibly by inviting touring opera companies like the Kirov for multi-week residencies.

So, Larry Wilker's reply to Hudson should be, "Thank you very much for your proposal. We appreciate your difficulties and would very much like to help. But come back with a counteroffer more rooted in reality---one that gives us some financial benefits as well as risks, and the ability to choose our own personnel who will guarantee not just the financial security but the artistic integrity of the Concert Association of Florida. Then we'll talk."

By Alan Becker

The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival is concluding its four-week series on a high note, as demonstrated by the terrific concert Friday night at the Helen K. Persson Recital Hall.

Debussy’s Premiere Rhapsody for clarinet and piano was originally written as a competition piece for the Paris Conservatoire, and subsequently orchestrated by the composer. Although the idiomatic writing was sensitively played by pianist Lisa Leonard, knowledge of the rich tapestry of orchestral colors tends to eclipse the composer’s first thoughts. It definitely held no terrors for clarinetist Michael Forte. His liquid tone melted beautifully into all the subtle crevices of the music in a performance that was one of the festival’s highlights.

Schubert’s Introduction and Variations on the song “Trockne Blumen” for flute and piano is based on one of the theme’s from his Die schone Mullerin cycle. Despite the maudlin title that translates as “faded flowers,” it is an upbeat set of extended variations that rarely strays from the melody. There is a substantial degree of virtuosity required of both players and the music received it in this performance. Once beyond the slow introduction, Karen Dixon’s flute playing moved from a slow, pulsating vibrato to find its way through one of Schubert’s most joyful late creations. Lisa Leonard continues to impress, as she has done throughout this series, by capturing just the right style, touch, and sound for everything she plays.

Jean-Paul Holstein’s Photogenies for bassoon and harp is a Frenchman’s tribute to the English photographer David Hamilton. Thankfully its five movements, sporting such titles as Abandon, Evasion, Invasion, are mercifully short. While the music might be described as abstract and conservative-contemporary, it’s one of those works that is probably more fun to perform than to listen to. The two instruments rarely play together since the composer treats them as a dialogue rather than a duo. Michael Ellert made the most of its bassoon intricacies, and Kay Kemper’s harp made some pleasant sounds. Holstein’s obscurity will not be reversed by this piece.

The String Quintet No. 2 by Brahms bears a late opus number, and was originally planned to be the composer’s swan song. Fortunately this was not to be so, and he went on to produce some of his greatest autumnal works. The music, particularly in the first two movements, is of great melodic beauty.

The ensemble’s playing was firmly thrust forward from the start, emphasizing the rich scoring in ravishing sonorities with the cello lending its deep tones without reticence. The slow movement gives the lion’s share of the work to the violas, the composer’s favorite instrument, and was played with just the burnished quality the music calls for. The Allegretto third movement serves as a somewhat pensive intermezzo before the Hungarian flavored finale. The quintet is among the least often heard of Brahms’s chamber music, and hearing it so well performed gave cause to anticipate the 18th installment of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival.

The program will be repeated 8 p.m. Saturday at Palm Beach Community College’s Eissey Campus Theatre, 3160 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens; and 2 p.m., Sunday at the Crest Theatre, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $21. Go to http://www.pbcmf.org/ or call 800-330-6874.

Alan Becker has reviewed concerts for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald. He has also written feature articles and CD reviews for the American Record Guide, and holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Syracuse University, with additional graduate studies at the University of Miami.

Gaps on the local classical music scene are so numerous, that one sometimes isn’t even aware of a specific absence until the void is filled. In eight years in South Florida, I can’t recall ever hearing a solo recital by a visiting cellist.

Kudos then to Mark Hart, artistic director of the Community Arts Program at Coral Gables Congregational Church, for breaking the violin and piano hegemony with the appearance of Mark Kosower Thursday evening. The extraordinary recital by the American cellist and pianist Jen-Won Oh served up one of the most outstanding concerts of the year, making the programming even more laudable.

Kosower, 31, earned several competition prizes in his youth and currently divides his time between solo appearances and weeks as co-principal cellist of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in Germany. With his wife and recital partner Oh, Kosower presented a generous, uncommonly venturesome program that serves as a model of what a recital program should be.

His mild-mannered persona and relaxed ease on stage belie a fiery musical personality. The cellist from Eau Claire, Wisconsin possesses a stellar technique and his laser-like articulation and whirlwind bravura were rivetin in showpieces by David Popper.

But even more than the fireworks, what most impressed was Kosower’s intelligence, elegance, beauty of tone, and a keenly focused musicianship that was put entirely at the service of the music. With Oh an equally strong musical personality, the performances had a unified communicative thrust and impassioned level of engagement.

Bach’s Viola da Gamba Sonata in G minor, BWV 1029 made an apt calling card for the duo, in a stylishly turned reading, with vigorous counterpoint and buoyant rhythms. In the Adagio, Kosower took a very spacious approach but sustained it well, the burnished tone and rich but calibrated vibrato conveying the music’s stoic strength

It took seven years for Francis Poulenc to complete his Cello Sonata for Pierre Fournier, unusual for a composer who rarely had difficulty getting things done. The opening Allegro’s mercurial mix of light hearted caprice and passing shadows is wholly characteristic, and Kosower and Oh had full measure of this music. In the somber melancholy of the ensuing Cavatine, Kosower and Oh played with the greatest delicacy, marking the contrast with their vivacious teamwork in the ensuing boulevardier joie de vivre of the final two movements.

For a composer as popular as Mendelssohn. his two cello sonatas are comparatively little known (at least to non-cellists). The Cello Sonata No. 2 is a delightful work, which received first-class advocacy. Equally demanding for both players, the outer movements have the youthful exuberance and headlong excitement of Mendelssohn’s piano concertos and the duo’s hair-trigger virtuosity was well suited to this vivacious music.

Their recent Naxos CDs of Ginastera and Hungarian music were represented with shorter works. As indicated by its title, Ginastera’s Pampeana No. 2 was inspired by the rolling plains of the Argentine Pampas in music that mixes edgy driving momentum, with a sense of solitude amid florid solo passages. Kosower provided such sterling advocacy one wondered why Ginastera’s music is so rarely performed.

The Hungarian disc was represented byPopper and Zoltan Kodaly’s introspective Adagio, the latter given a warmly eloquent rendering enhanced by the glorious low tones of Kosower’s instrument.

A celebrated cello virtuoso and composer of the late 19th century, Popper wrote several brilliant showpieces for his instrument including the Hungarian Rhapsody. Kosower fairly attacked the music with blinding speed and lightning articulation in a thrilling performance that sailing effortlessly through the landmine of complexities.

For an encore, Kosower and Oh offered another Popper dazzler, Spinning Song, the rollicking pyrotechnical flash rounding off a terrific evening of music.