Your September 2026 guide to Philly-area classical music

Young Mozart

Opera Philadelphia: Mitridate, re di Ponto
Wednesday September 9 & Thursday September 10, 7pm
Sunday September 13, 2pm
Academy of Music, Broad & Locust Streets, Philadelphia

Opera Philadelphia kicks off the season with the Philadelphia premiere of Mozart’s very first opera. Based on a play by Jean Racine, this opera seria was written at age 14! It premiered in 1770 and tells of Mithridates, King of Pontus, who was defeated by the Romans around 63 BC. This is a new production conducted by Corrado Rovaris and directed by Emma Griffin. With acclaimed tenor Lawrence Brownlee in the title role, it features company leader Anthony Roth Costanzo and soprano Meredith Wohlgemuth as his sons, with soprano Lauren Snouffer as the woman loved by all three men. As usual with recent OP productions, there is limited seating, and pick-your-price tickets start at $11.

Two concerts with Serafin ensemble

Wonderful Winds
Thursday September 10, 5pm and 7:30pm
PhilaLandmarks Series / Hill-Physick House, 321 S. 4th Street, Philadelphia

Reflections and Remembrances (with Grant Youngblood)
Friday September 11, 7pm
Grace United Methodist Church, 900 Washington Street, Wilmington

This Wilmington ensemble will be at Old City’s historic Hill-Physick House with two identical concerts on the same evening. Repertoire includes a duo by Beethoven for oboe and bassoon; Mozart’s Oboe Quartet; and a Bassoon Quartet by François Devienne (a Mozart contemporary), with a reception between the two performances. Featured musicians are John Dee (oboe), Rick Barrantes Aguero (bassoon), Luigi Mazzocchi and Kate Ransom (violins), Yinzi Kong (viola), Eve Miller (cello), and pianist Read Gainsford.

The next evening, this same ensemble will be joined in Wilmington by baritone Grant Youngblood in Reflections and Remembrances, a memorial nod to this important date. The Friday concert includes Samuel Barber’s Dover Beach, Beethoven’s piano sonata Les Adieux, Strauss’s Morgen (for baritone, violin, and piano); a work by Loeffler for oboe, viola, and piano; and works by Schubert and Butterworth.

Variant Six and Eugene Drucker

Variant Six: Arabesque
Friday September 11, 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm)
The Maas Building, 1325 N. Randolph Street, Philadelphia

This luscious program will feature two members of Philadelphia’s popular Variant Six vocal ensemble—soprano Rebecca Myers and mezzo Elisa Sutherland—in an intimate recital of solos and duets. They will be accompanied by Dušan Balarin on lute and theorbo in music from the 17th century by composers like Barbara Strozzi, Henry Purcell, Sigismondo d'India, and Claudio Monteverdi. Following the concert, there will be a meet-the-artists reception in the Maas Building’s garden.

Music at Bunker Hill: Eugene Drucker and Friends
Sunday September 20, 3pm
Bunker Hill Presbyterian Church, 330 Greentree Road, Sewell NJ

For this concert, violinist Eugene Drucker, a founding member of the fabled Emerson String Quartet, is joined by William Frampton (viola), Roberta Cooper (cello), and pianist Gili Melamed-Lev. The ensemble will present works by “the three B’s”: two Bach canons from The Art of The Fugue; Beethoven’s Romance in F for violin and piano; and Brahms’s Sonatensatz; along with a fourth “B”, Max Bruch’s Romanze for viola and piano. Rounding out the afternoon alphabetically as well as musically, they’ll finish with Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-Flat.

From Barber to Bach

Lyric Fest: Written in the Stars – American and British Composers and Poets
Saturday September 26, 3pm
Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, 625 Montgomery Avenue, Bryn Mawr

Sunday September 27, 3pm
Academy of Vocal Arts, 1920 Spruce Street, Philadelphia

Opening its “Infinite Heavens” season, this ensemble (dedicated to song) presents works by American and British poets and composers inspired by the stars. It includes the world premiere of All is Change by composer Rene Orth and poet Jeanne Minahan, as well as songs new and old by Vaughan Williams, Barber, Kile Smith, James Primosch, Lee Hoiby, Daron Hagen, Abbie Betinis, John Duke, Florence Price, Ives, Britten, and Hariette Davison. The concert features Christine Lyons and Kelly Ann Bixby (sopranos), Maren Montalbano (mezzo), and pianist Laura Ward, with Suzanne DuPlantis as reader. The ensemble welcomes Randall Scarlata, who has sung with Lyric Fest since their 2003 inception, as co-artistic director with Ward and DuPlantis.

Philadelphia Bach Collective – Tuesday Concerts
September 22 & December 1, 2026, 1pm
February 9 & May 4, 2027, 1pm
St. Mark’s Church, 1625 Locust Street, Philadelphia

This series was a hit last year in its inaugural season, and for its second year this performer-led collective of Philadelphia’s early music artists returns to St. Mark’s Church. Each hourlong midday concert is pay-what-you-wish, opening in September with the Bach cantata Jesu, der du meine Seele (BWV 78) and an identically titled Telemann concerto for flute and strings. And on March 7, 2027, the ensemble will present Bach’s St. John Passion (BWV 245) at Rittenhouse Square’s Church of the Holy Trinity in a performance also featuring TENET Vocal Artists.