Composed in 1938, Henri Tomasi’s delightful Concert Champêtre ushers us into the elegant, stately world of 17th- and 18th-century courtly dance music. Icelandic cellist and SMF alum Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir performs the fascinating Bow to String, composed especially for her by her countryman Daniel Bjarnason. Schubert wrote the stormy Rondo for Josef Slavik, performing it with his friend less than two years before his untimely death. Schubert’s String Quintet, written in the composer’s final burst of inspiration, is brought to life by Thorsteinsdóttir and the GRAMMY®-nominated Miró Quartet.

The 2025 Sarasota Music Festival concludes with a true “Hollywood ending.” Elena Urioste, a Festival alum, will captivate you with her passion and flair for drama as she performs Korngold’s post-Romantic Violin Concerto, brimming with soaring melodies from his film scores. In his Symphony No. 2, Robert Schumann draws inspiration from other music, honoring Bach and incorporating the music of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and perhaps even his own scores. Tinged with only a hint of melancholy, the work’s overall message is one of joy, concluding the 61st Sarasota Music Festival on a jubilant note.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s work for nine players premiered in 1894 and was not heard again until recently. It showcases the composer’s admiration for Dvořák while revealing his distinctive, late-Romantic voice. Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings, composed as his fame was on the rise, solidified his reputation as a master composer. Pianist and Mozart scholar Robert Levin leads the Festival Orchestra from the keyboard in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17, which was the last of four concertos he composed between 1784 and 1786 and remains one of the composer’s most popular works.

Conductor Stephanie Childress returns with a captivating program featuring Armenian American composer Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Tagh (Diary) of an Immigrant, which the composer describes as “an imagined journal entry by a hope-filled someone.” Shostakovich wrote his popular Second Piano Concerto—voted ninth in the 2024 “Classic FM Hall of Fame”—for the 19th birthday of his son Maxim, who premiered the work at his conservatory graduation. Beethoven’s joyful Symphony No. 2 teeters on the precipice of several significant moments: it is the last symphony he composed in the style of Mozart, and it also marked the beginning of Beethoven’s mounting realization that his deafness was incurable.