Critic's music picks for 2008-09

From porcine pipers to Faust's damnation:
One critic's best picks for the new music season

TOM PURDOM

The brochures for most local musical organizations have appeared in our mailboxes (sometimes in multiple copies) and evoked the usual feelings of anticipation. I recommend here a few highly personal selections from a cornucopia that offers local audiences the fruits of more than six centuries of musical husbandry.

Hilary Hahn in recital. Any season that includes a performance by Hahn merits a big red circle around the appropriate date. She’s been a wonder since she entered Curtis at age 11 and she’s still the reigning poet of the violin repertoire. (March 4, 2009; www.kimmelcenter.org)

Fidelio. For those of us who are primarily interested in instrumental and choral music, Beethoven’s only opera holds an irresistible curiosity value. The Philadelphia Orchestra plays one of Fidelio’s overtures nearly every season, but the opera itself only shows up every few years. I’ve seen it performed only once, so for me the Opera Company production is a de facto Big Event. (October 10-24, 2008; www.operaphilly.com)

Orchestra 2001’s premiere of the final volume of George Crumb’s American Song Book. Crumb’s six-volume project subjects classic American songs to the inspirations of his inventive, individualistic musical imagination. The results range from the deeply moving to the gently comic, and they’re always unpredictable. I can’t tell you what this offering will be like because Crumb has taken a different approach with every volume. (October 3 and 5, 2008; www.orchestra2001.org)

Tempest di Mare’s Baroque horn feast. The valveless “natural horn” produces a clear, refined sound that adds a distinctive color to Baroque music. It’s also incredibly difficult to play. Tempest di Mare’s program devoted to music for Baroque chamber music for natural horn and other instruments should be a collector’s item. (December 6-7, 2008; www.tempestadimare.org)

Accordionist Lidia Kaminska. Astral Artists is presenting a number of concerts that feature unfamiliar music, in addition to showcasing its carefully selected promising young performers. But a concert by an accordion virtuoso, accompanied by other Astral Artists, clearly deserves special mention. (December 7, 2008; www.astralartists.org)

The Piffaro Christmas concert, with actor and mime Mark Jaster. Piffaro’s Christmas concert is a perennial holiday centerpiece, and any Piffaro event that includes Jaster is usually a standout. Piffaro will recreate a rural French Renaissance Christmas Eve— religious and secular— based on a manuscript that includes dancing dogs and bagpiping pigs. (December 19-22, 2008; www.piffaro.com)

The Damnation of Faust. Berlioz’s penchant for the grandiose can sometimes verge on the comic, but Faust is one of his great successes. If Sir Simon Rattle can control his own tendency to excess, this Orchestra concert should be one of the major happenings of the season.
(April 29-May 2, 2009; www.philorch.org)

Last year at this time I said I was looking forward to the entire seasons of the Lyric Fest art song series and Mimi Stillman’s Dolce Suono chamber series. I wasn’t disappointed last season and I’m confident I won’t be disappointed this season either. Both series are still two of the city’s best bargains.