A comprehensive guide to spring's classical music performances

It’s spring! You want to be released from the prison of winter. So what better way to celebrate the arrival of good weather than to drive, bike, walk, or even take the T to your favorite concert venue? I already know what I’m most looking forward to. Here’s a selection of the season’s impressive variety of classical events to choose from for yourself.

And please don’t forget the terrific, often free programs at Boston’s numerous schools and conservatories, and keep your eyes peeled for other venues I may not yet know about myself.

The BSO began 2024 with some impressive programs, especially two early 20th-century operas by Bartók and Shostakovich. This spring, there are BSO concerts almost every week through the beginning of May (usually Thursday through Saturday or Sunday) and whatever the repertoire, it’s thrilling to hear a great orchestra in one of the world’s acoustical wonders. But good playing isn’t all there is to classical music, and these upcoming BSO concerts seem to me particularly seductive. The superstar pianist Yuja Wang will be making a guest appearance in one of this season’s “Music for the Senses” events — a rare performance of Olivier Messiaen’s gigantic “Turangalîla-symphonie,” an evening-length work, conducted by BSO music director Andris Nelsons, that includes exotic gamelan music and the spine-tingling electronic instrument the ondes Martenot, played here by Cécile Lartigau (April 11-14). Nelsons leads another star soloist, violinist Hilary Hahn, in one of the staples of the classical repertoire, the Brahms Violin Concerto, on a program beginning with another rarity, Mozart’s Symphony No. 33, along with Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Archora” (April 18-20).

I have my reservations about Nelsons as an artist. And one of those issues is his repertoire. But at least that seems to be expanding. He ends the BSO season conducting another work that doesn’t get performed often enough but one for which the BSO has a history of outstanding performances: Hector Berlioz’s gorgeous “symphony” for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra, “Roméo et Juliette” (you may be familiar with the story). The soloists are an excellent trio who have all sung at the Metropolitan Opera: mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges (the superb and mysterious Nefertiti in the Met’s acclaimed production of Philip Glass’s “Akhnaton”), tenor Lawrence Brownlee and bass-baritone John Relyea (May 2-4).

Benjamin Zander’s final program of the season with his justly renowned Boston Philharmonic Orchestra consists of two of the most profound works of classical music: Mozart’s darkly insinuating Piano Concerto No. 24 in C-minor, with the magnificent Alessandro Deljavan; and, marking the 200th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth, his unfinished Ninth Symphony, an overwhelming spiritual epic (April 26).

Zander will also lead the impressive Boston Philharmonic Youth Symphony Orchestra in another inspired pairing of concerto and symphony — this time Schumann’s Cello Concerto, with cellist Zlatomir Fung making a welcome return, and Mahler’s immense and autobiographical Symphony No. 5, another Zander specialty (May 3).

Given the ongoing restoration work on Faneuil Hall, longtime tenant Steven Lipsitt’s BB&B has a temporary new home at the Harvard Club. This spring’s concert, “Yehudi Wyner at 95!”, celebrates an extraordinary composer living and working in our midst. This program includes his “Tuscan Triptych” (1985) for string orchestra. But word has it that BB&B has commissioned a new piece from Wyner for next season, Duet-Concertino, for two of his most celebrated friends, pianist Robert Levin and violist Kim Kashkashian. Levin and Kashkashian are also participating in this year’s concert, playing pieces by Britten (Kashkashian) and Mozart (the enchanting piano concerto in E-flat, K. 449 with Levin).

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Pianist Bruce Liu, winner of the 2021 Chopin Competition, makes his Boston debut thanks to the Celebrity Series of Boston. He’ll be negotiating a selection of short pieces by Rameau, Ravel’s magical “Miroirs,” and two finger-twisting works responding to Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”: Chopin’s variations on the famous seduction duet “Là ci darem la mano” and Liszt’s “Réminiscences de Don Juan.” I trust Liu will be providing something more than mere prodigious dexterity.

This three-year-old ensemble has made such a name for itself that these concerts in the Celebrity Series are officially sold out, though there’s often the possibility of last-minute availability. What they’re playing — a marvelous Haydn Opus 20 quartet, Billy Childs’ “Awakening” quartet and maybe the most profound string quartet ever written, Beethoven’s quartet No. 15 — is not for sissies.

Broadway legend and multi-Tony Award-winner Patti Lupone returns to Boston in an evening she calls “A Life in Notes,” and which the Celebrity Series calls a “musical memoir.” It’s just what we need. I know I want to hear the original Broadway Evita sing Stephen Sondheim’s “The Ladies Who Lunch” from “Company,” which recently won her a third Tony Award.

If I had to recommend only one concert this season, this would be the one — the first pairing, in the Celebrity Series of Boston, of two of our most brilliant and profound musicians: German violinist Christian Tetzlaff and Russian American pianist Kirill Gerstein. Their exciting choice of Eastern and Western European composers includes Brahms, Janáček, Bartók and György Kurtág, plus the Boston premiere of British composer/conductor/pianist Thomas Adès’ suite from his remarkable opera “The Tempest.” Tetzlaff’s last Boston Symphony appearance was in the Sibelius Violin Concerto at Tanglewood in 2018, under Adès. And Gerstein’s most recent Boston appearances were also with Adès: playing Ligeti’s Piano Concerto under Adès’ direction at a BSO celebration of the composer’s 100th birthday, and even more exciting, as Adès’ partner in a sensational Ligeti two-piano piece. I can’t wait for this concert

The world’s favorite living cellist and world citizen is joined by his frequent partner, British pianist Kathryn Stott, on the eve of her retirement at the end of this year, in a program Ma credits Stott with designing: A suite of short pieces by Fauré, Sérgio Assad and Dvořák will be followed by bigger works by Shostakovich, Arvo Pärt and, in an arrangement for cello and piano, Franck’s famous violin sonata. In the program note for this concert, Ma writes about Stott’s teacher, Nadia Boulanger, being a teacher of Ma’s Havard professor Luise Vosgerchian, who Ma says “liberated me from being a neurotic instrumentalist tethered to perfection and taught me how to approach music with perspective, with humanity.” A major presence in her lifetime, she was obviously a great teacher.

The wonderful Brentano String Quartet makes one of its all-too-rare Boston visits for the Celebrity Series in a wide range of classical works: Mozart’s D-major quartet, K. 499, maybe his greatest string quartet, followed by Shostakovich’s devastating C-minor quartet No. 8 (dedicated “to the victims of fascism and the war”) and Mendelssohn’s more positive quartet in D major.

The Celebrity Series’ only visiting international orchestra this spring is offering a traditional but appealing all-German program under its admired music director Jakub Hrůša: two Wagner overtures (one of them the sublime Prelude to “Lohengrin”), Brahms’s Symphony No. 3 and the Schumann Piano Concerto with pianist Lukáš Vondráček. This could be an ideal match between an orchestra and the music you especially want to hear it perform.

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Emmanuel Music, under the direction of Ryan Turner, returns to the composer most closely associated with Emmanuel, and one of the towering masterpieces of Western music: Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” — perhaps the musical work of Christian theology to which just about anyone of any spiritual persuasion can respond. Eloquent tenor Jonas Budris sings the narrating Evangelist and resonant bass David McFerrin sings Jesus, with a strong cast of virtuoso vocal soloists from the regular Emmanuel Music ensemble (a number of whom recently stood out in cameo appearances in Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in both its Boston and New York performances).

The great British director Peter Brook — famous for his athletic “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and unsparing “King Lear” — invented this shorthand version of “Carmen,” with only four singers, much of Bizet’s music missing, and substantial plot elements altered. Maybe it’s best not to think of this as a version of the opera at all, but it’s definitely something worth contemplating, and this enterprising little opera company might be just the right group to pull it off.

This forgotten opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Dominick Argento was his eighth and composed for the bicentennial. It was widely admired yet hasn’t been performed in 34 years. Gil Rose’s Odyssey Opera and BMOP, probably best known for reviving forgotten operas, have done well by Argento in the past and have provided some of Boston’s most enjoyable opera performances since the demise of Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston and the departure from Boston of Peter Sellars. Argento’s premise is intriguing. The titular voyage refers to a trip Poe took from Richmond to Baltimore the week before he died. In the opera, passages from Poe’s writing weave through his feverish imagination. I’m not familiar with tenor Peter Tantsits, who sings Poe, but he’s worked with some of the major directors of our time, including Sellars, William Kentridge and Calixto Bieito. The cast includes sopranos Kirsten Arnold and Maggie Finnegan, the admirable baritone Tom Meglioranza, and tenor Neal Ferreira.

Martin Pearlman’s Boston Baroque, “North America’s first permanent Baroque orchestra,” would normally turn up in the category of Early Music. But BB’s only spring offering is definitely an opera, and one of the greatest: Mozart’s “dramma giocoso” (comedy-drama), “Don Giovanni.” This marks Pearlman’s fourth production since 1986. It’s being staged by Chuck Hudson, with baritone Sidney Outlaw in his role debut as opera’s most seductive sexual predator, Metropolitan Opera soprano Susanna Phillips as the traumatized Donna Anna, and tenor Nicholas Phan as Don Ottavio, her helpful but helpless fiancé. Pearlman has chosen to perform Mozart’s very first version of “Don Giovanni,” the “Prague version,” so we won’t get to hear the two magnificent arias Mozart wrote for his later production in Vienna. Still, it’s a chance to hear this ever-challenging, ever mystifying masterwork in a form closer than usual to the way Mozart originally conceived it.

The choral group Cantata Singers, under music director Noah Horn, joins forces with the New England Philharmonic, under music director Tianhui Ng, for a post-Easter performance of “Messiah” — but not the usual “Messiah.” This is one by the late Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström, and was commissioned in 2009 by the Oregon Bach Festival and the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart and uses the same libretto Charles Jennens created for Handel, here drawing on the Bible in an odd and haunting contemporary idiom. The soloists are soprano Maggie Finnegan, mezzo-soprano Maria Dominique Lopez, tenor Dylan Morrongiello and bass-baritone Leroy Davis (April 28). Later, the Cantata Singers close the spring season with a 1966 choral setting of W.E.B. DuBois’ 1904 essay “Credo” by the African American composer Margaret Bonds (June 8).

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A musician’s musician, pianist Jonathan Biss completes his three-part cycle of Schubert’s last piano sonatas, among the most sublime and moving compositions ever created for solo piano. Each sonata will be preceded by a Schubert impromptu in (more or less) the same key and followed by a premiere of a new piano piece co-commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The A-major Sonata is joined by a new work by Alvin Singleton (March 24) and the heart-wrenching B-flat Sonata by a new work by MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey (April 28). Note: as of this writing, both performances are listed as sold out, but often persistence may pay off at the last minute.

Coming up for A Far Cry, Boston’s beloved conductorless chamber orchestra, will be a feast for the ears of every violin aficionado. “Stradivari Serenade” is an evening of movements from Bach, Tchaikovsky, Janáček and some other lively but not strictly classical selections. The bigger deal, actually, isn’t the music but the instruments. The Criers will be playing, solo and in groups, 18 rare Cremonese instruments made by such legendary figures as Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati, gathered from the vaults of Brookline’s Reuning & Son Violins (we’re promised a collection of instruments worth over $100 million). One of the Reunings will talk about each of the instruments and each of the Criers will give a brief demonstration and talk about what it feels like to play such an extraordinary instrument (March 29).

Later, crier Jesse Irons will curate a concert called “Perception,” a program of musical transformations, with two very different pieces — Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Meditation on the Bach Chorale ‘Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit’” and Mozart’s famously endearing “Eine leine Nachtmusik” — leading up to Béla Bartók’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta,” which A Far Cry calls a constantly shifting “musical fever dream.” Gubaidulina’s “meditation” is a transformation of a Bach chorale. “How do framing and context impact our perception?” A Far Cry asks. Might the two transformative pieces surrounding the Mozart transform his sprightly and elegant little masterpiece into something deeper or more otherworldly? This concert might very well provide an answer to that metaphysical musical question (May 10).

One of America’s most loved pianists, Garrick Ohlsson, joins forces with a BSO violinist, clarinetist and cellist for one of the great chamber works of the 20th century, the piece Olivier Messiaen composed in a concentration camp for the musicians he had at hand. He called it his “Quartet for the End of Time.” Three Bach keyboard pieces (one in an arrangement by Busoni) begin the program.

Still curated after 39 years by the distinguished cellist and former New England Conservatory president Laurence Lesser, this series of free Monday evening concerts at Jordan Hall, including both New England Conservatory students and celebrated faculty members, remains a highlight of the season. For example, in honor of April Fools’ Day, we’ll get to hear two movements from Mozart’s hilarious “A Musical Joke,” along with Smetana’s G-minor Piano Trio (no joke) with stunning pianist HaeSun Paik, violinist Ayano Ninomiya and cellist Lluís Claret, followed by the great Borromeo String Quartet (in what seems to be its only Boston appearance) and special guest violist Kim Kashkashian in the all-too-rarely-heard Bruckner Piano Quintet. In May, the First Monday concert will feature the dramatic Brahms C-minor trio and another rarity, Ernest Chausson’s Piano Concerto in D for piano and string quartet, with special guests the eloquent violinist Miriam Fried and the breathtaking pianist Marc-André Hamelin, along with members of the prize-winning Terra String Quartet.

The Lyds, as the members of the Lydian String Quartet are referred to affectionately, in longtime residence at Brandeis, have three local concerts coming up, two of which include quartets by Beethoven (the “Serioso” Quartet, Op. 95) and Ravel (his only one). The Brandeis concert on April 6 has the world premiere of Kurt Rohde’s “seeking all that’s still unsung” in the middle, while the Duxbury concert on April 7 has Zhou Long’s “Song of the Ch’in.” The final Lydian program, the annual Henri Lazarof Chamber Concert on May 5, includes Lazarof’s String Quartet No. 8, with other repertoire still to be announced.

The title “Serenades & Merry Pranks” is not quite as frivolous as it first seems for the spring concert flutist Julie Scolnik has put together for her chamber group Mistral. Part of her title comes from the famous Richard Strauss tone poem “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks,” which Mistral will play in a chamber arrangement that reduces Strauss’s large orchestra to five players. The program will also include two movements from the Dohnanyi Sextet, Neilsen’s “Serenata in vano,” Vincent Gambaro’s Wind Quintet, Paul Schoenfield’s Clarinet Trio and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Nonet for strings, winds and piano.

This admirable organization founded by superstar violist Kim Kashkashian donates the proceeds from each concert to feed those in need. The final Boston concert this spring, curated by piano virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin, is part of Music for Food’s Parlando (“speaking”) series, which includes the spoken recitation of a work of literature, in this case Richard Strauss’s melodrama based on Tennyson’s poem “Enoch Arden.”  Actor Hershey Felder will join Hamelin, presumably as speaker.

Violist Marcus A. Thompson’s Boston Chamber Music Society draws from a wide variety of players for its wide range of music. This season’s penultimate concert combines major works by Stravinsky (his brilliant suite of music from “L’Histoire du Soldat”), Richard Strauss (his profoundly moving “Metamorphosen,” really an elegy for Europe composed at the end of the Second World War), and one of the greatest works in all of chamber music, Schumann’s Piano Quintet (April 7). BCMS’s final concert is full of musical and poetic surprises: Debussy’s two-piano “Caprices en blanc et noir,” Paul Schoenfield’s 1986 “Café Music” (the composer says his intention was to write a kind of “high-class dinner music”), and one of the landmarks of modern music, Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” his startling and colorful setting of surrealistic poems by Albert Giraud, which will be recited by the superb Lucy Shelton (April 21). The season roster of stellar musicians includes director Thompson, pianists Max Levinson and Benjamin Hochman, violinists Jennifer Frautschi and Yura Lee (who’s also a violist), cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor and clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois.

Kuok-Wai Lio, born in Macau, offers one of those single-composer programs you wish would happen more often. Lio will be playing an all-Schumann program with three of his greatest masterpieces: the intimate short poems for the piano “Kinderszenen” (Scenes from Childhood), Op. 15 and “Kreisleriana” (“Fantasies for the piano” inspired by the volatile musician invented by E.T.A. Hoffmann), Op. 16; concluding with heroic C-major “Fantasie,” Op. 17. If Lio plays these as well as his decision to play them might indicate, this could be one of the greatest piano recitals of the season.

This Black arts institution Castle of Our Skins, “dedicated to fostering cultural curiosity” through music, presents “Roots”: music from the African diaspora featuring pianist Kyle P. Walker in music for piano solo, trio, quartet and quintet by David Baker, Trevor Weston, Hannah Kendall and Brian Raphael Nabors, plus a string quartet by Shelley Washington — all but one composed in the 21st century. We’ll get pieces rooted in classical, jazz, folk and contemporary music at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

The delicious chamber ensemble Winsor Music (directed by violinist Gabriela Díaz and clarinetist Rane Moore) ends its season with “Music of the Mystics,” featuring Improbable Beasts, “a raucous multi-piece bass clarinet ensemble whose mission is to share deep resonances, soaring lyricism and propulsive grooves” (I believe it!). The music ranges from Hildegard von Bingen to the Finnish avant-garde group Alamaailman Vasarat and the premiere of Jon Russell’s “You Are the Universe in Ecstatic Motion” (text by Rumi).

The final spring concert by David Feltner’s COB celebrates the centennial of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Jazz pianist Ted Rosenthal joins the group for the Gershwin classic as well as the “jazzy twists” we’re promised on Mozart, Chopin and Schumann.

As far as I can tell, the 25th season finale of this loveable chamber music collective, called “Birds of a Feather,” will contain no actual bird music. The title actually refers to such composers as Rosenmüller, Reincken, Westhoff, Schmelzer and Scheidt who shared with Bach a certain free-form technique called “Stylus phantasticus” — all of whom will be included on this program. The ensemble will play at venues in Cambridge, Lexington and Brattleboro, Vermont.

Founded in 1999, the Radius Ensemble (Ensemble-in-Residence at the Longy School), under the direction of Jennifer Montbach, is a truly 21st-century group. This season’s final program, “Epitome,” emphasizes its eclectic nature, with a focus on contemporary works — but not exclusively contemporary. Selections include a sonata by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges along with George Crumb’s beloved “Vox balaenae (Voice of the Whale),” Steve Reich’s “New York Counterpoint” and the world premiere of Elena Ruehr’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie” (a Radius commission).

Julia Cash is Pro Arte’s concertmaster, and “Julia Cash and Friends” is the eclectic program she has selected to close the Pro Arte’s spring season. The group will perform Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in B minor, Grażyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for 4 violins and Bedřich Smetana’s moving Quartet No. 1 (“From my Life”).

The Rockport Chamber Festival presents a spring and summer season of weekends with local celebrities and distinguished visitors. The first week alone includes musical riches for which I would recommend a special trip to Rockport. Opening night will have pianist Garrick Ohlsson playing Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin (June 7). The Chooi Brothers will play their violins, with pianist Clayton Stephenson, in music by Shostakovich, Corigliano and Sarasate (June 8). And the superb Dover Quartet performs Mozart, Janáček and Shostakovich (June 9).

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Artistic director Jonathan Cohen makes his only appearance with H+H this spring in the intimate surroundings of Jordan Hall with a concert devoted to Baroque love songs, focusing on cantatas by Handel, Porpora and Alessandro Scarlatti, with soprano Robin Johanssen and countertenor Christopher Lowrey (March 22 and 24). In high contrast, H+H’s next two concerts will be massive musical enterprises each taking place in Symphony Hall: Bach’s B-minor Mass (led by Masaaki Suzuki, April 5 and 7) and the Brahms Requiem (led by Bernard Labadie, with soprano Lucy Crowe and baritone James Atkinson, April 19 and 21). The H+H season ends on a smaller scale again with all six of Bach’s sparkling Brandenburg Concertos at each performance (co-directed by concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky and principal keyboard Ian Watson, at Sanders Theatre and Jordan Hall, May 2-4).

Two of the most celebrated international early music ensembles will both be visiting Boston courtesy of the Boston Early Music Festival. Gambist Jordi Savall and his group Hespèrion XXI will appear in a program called “Le Nuove Musiche: The Baroque Revolution in Europe (1560-1660),” which features music from the earliest explosions of the Baroque style, including the influential Girolamo Frescobaldi (April 5). Two weeks later, the extraordinary vocal group Stile Antico returns to Boston with “A Divine Hope: Dante’s journey from inferno to paradise,” which traces, through both instrumental music and music with Dante’s own words, his descent into inferno, his experience of purgatory, and his ultimate ascendance into heaven embodied in Tomás Luis de Victoria’s literally heavenly 12-part Magnificat (April 19).

Boston’s popular medieval vocal ensemble, under Scott Metcalfe, celebrates the completion of its multi-year survey of the 15th-century Flemish master Johannes Ockeghem with Okeghem Weekend, a six-part program of concerts (including a pub concert), lectures and master classes — plus a new recording. As its press release announces: “Blue Heron is at present very likely the only ensemble in the world to have sung every piece written by the great Johannes Ockeghem.” Individual tickets and a weekend pass are both available.

The Boston Camerata, founded in 1954, is doing a lot of traveling lately, so its only Boston concert this spring is a program called “Celestial Visions of Medieval Britain,” which will explore the connection between the physical and the spiritual world, and center the flute playing of composer Mara Winter, who is the guest coordinator for this program. The music will be sung in what the Camerata calls “all three of medieval Britain’s literary languages: Latin, English and French” and will also include some newly composed pieces.

This lovable small group of players and singers present the perfect program for the season. “Small Paths to the Greenwood” celebrates springtime and regrowth interactively with the audience, featuring consort lessons, Renaissance dancing and singalongs.

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As part of its Music for the Senses series, the BSO is offering a free evening of discussions and contemporary music having to do with the healing power of music. Composer Tod Machover  (from MIT’s Media Lab) will moderate a discussion between neuroscience researchers Li-Huei Tsai (MIT) and Psyché Loui (Northeastern), to be followed by a stimulating musical program. The professional and student performers include BSO Assistant Conductor Samy Rachid and pianist/conductor Stephen Drury, Drury’s  Callithumpian Consort, [nec]shivaree (New England Conservatory’s student avant-garde ensemble), pianist Joseph Vasconi, and Carduus (a vocal chamber group directed by Holly Druckman). The Lydian String Quartet will perform Machover’s “Gammified” (for string quartet and electronics), Marti Epstein’s “Troubled Queen,” Olivier Messiaen’s “Catalogue d’oiseaux” No. 3: “Le Merle Bleu” (the bluebird) and Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel.” Just writing about this puts me in better mental and spiritual condition.

David Hoose completes his last full season directing Boston’s oldest “new music” group with “Concert III” which features two world premieres: a 50th-anniversary commission by one of Boston’s favorite Boston-based composers, classical and jazz double-threat Donal Fox, plus another world premiere by Collage’s 2023-2024 Fellow Len Tetta. The program also includes the Boston premiere of “New England Verses” (2019) by the multifaceted Mark DeVoto, along with Steven Mackey’s 1999 “Micro-Concerto.” The brilliant soprano Tony Arnold is the welcome guest soloist.

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