Festival Concerts

Music can transport us through time, yet it is forever tied to its moment of creation. The 61st Sarasota Music Festival begins with an epic 300-year musical adventure. Hear the 18th-century tune people whistled in the streets that found its way into Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Trio. Nicolas Namoradze makes his Festival debut with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue from the landmark Well-Tempered Clavier. Leap 150 years ahead to Scriabin’s lush, late-Romantic Sonata, and fast-forward another century for Namoradze’s own arrangement of Ravel’s ballet music. Jeffrey Kahane joins Namoradze for Schubert’s sparkling rondo, written in the composer’s final year.

Twentieth-century Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos grew up amidst the sounds of the street musicians of Rio de Janeiro. In her Festival debut, the versatile flutist Alex Sopp brings her talents to Villa-Lobos´ popular Assiobio a Játo (The Jet Whistle). Michi Wiancko reflects on her musical experiences with her mother in the nostalgic Fantasia for Tomorrow. Tessa Lark, Mike Block, and Jeffrey Kahane reprise their 2024 Festival’s triumph of improvisation, this time using an Old English folk song. The program ends with a gorgeous Piano Trio by Rebecca Clarke.

Festival faculty and fellows team up for Bach’s joyous Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, one of the great monuments of 18th-century music. Shostakovich dedicated his Piano Trio No. 2 to his dear departed friend Ivan Sollertinsky, harnessing Jewish folk idioms to honor his memory. Mike Block revisits his fascinating Global Music Collaboration, a unique cross-cultural experience reflecting live performance’s spontaneous magic. Ludwig Thuille’s lyrical Sextet provides a charming conclusion to this wide-ranging program.

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.

Festival fellows bring their favorite chamber works to life, performing a selection of short pieces and movements.

Join us for a cherished SMF tradition—a captivating lecture by former SMF Music Director Robert Levin! Renowned for his incredible expertise and engaging style, Levin shares insights on topics like performance practice, improvisation, music history, and music theory, inspiring both Fellows and audiences alike. Stay tuned for the announcement of the 2025 lecture topic—it’s sure to be a highlight of the season!

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.

Alberto Ginastera’s String Quartet No. 1, composed in 1948, skillfully combines the angular musical language of Bartók with rhythmic and tuneful Argentinian folk traditions. Modeled on Mozart’s Serenade, Richard Strauss’s Suite for 13 Winds—written when he was just 18—exemplifies his extraordinary talent for melody and catapulted him to international fame. Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14, based on his emotionally charged art song, “Death and the Maiden,” reveals the composer at his most passionate. Sandy Yamamoto, a former member of the Miró Quartet and SMF alum, will lead the orchestral arrangement Mahler envisioned for this intense and profound work.

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.

Festival fellows bring their favorite chamber works to life, performing a selection of short pieces and movements.

The final Artist Showcase of the 2025 Festival opens with Haydn’s lighthearted Divertimento No. 1, written to entertain the court of Esterhazy. Cellist Emmanuel Feldman and New York Philharmonic violist Rebecca Young make their Festival debuts in Joaquín Turina’s 1931 Piano Quartet, a unique mélange of classical form and Spanish flair. Feldman and Jeffrey Kahane join forces for Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata. One of a very few chamber works Rachmaninoff composed, the powerful work traverses a dazzling range of emotion.

Festival fellows bring their favorite chamber works to life, performing a selection of short pieces and movements.

The theme of music and memory takes center stage in the final Festival Friday. Samuel Barber’s 1953 Summer Music, an evocative portrayal of a balmy outdoor afternoon, was composed with the wind players’ favorite effects in mind. Richard Strauss’s powerful Metamorphosen, featuring 23 unique string parts, delves into a period of massive change in Germany. Singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane, Jeffrey Kahane’s son, performs October 1, 1939/Port of Hamburg, based on his grandmother’s diary as she traveled across America in 1939 after fleeing Germany. Jeffrey Kahane is the soloist in Heirloom, the piano concerto his son composed and dedicated to him “with love, admiration, gratitude, and awe.” Gabriel Kahane conducts this captivating and deeply personal work that intertwines three generations of family history.

he 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.