Film: It is a complaint have heard so often I can anticipate it returning every Oscar season: “Where can I go to see the short subjects, both animated and live action, that are nominated for an Academy Award?” The answer used to be a big shrug, but now you can head to Emerging Cinemas. This week, at the funky art cinema called Mos’Art in Lake Park, you can see all five animated shorts in competition, including Day & Night, Pixar’s tasty amuse-bouche that you have probably already seen, since it was attached to the same projection reel as Toy Story 3. Next week comes the live action shorts. – H. Erstein

Theater: This is the final weekend for Palm Beach Dramaworks’ acclaimed production of Mark St. Germain’s cerebral two-character fictional history play, Freud’s Last Session, a meeting of the minds between Dr. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and a staunch atheist and novelist-lecturer C.S. Lewis, a recent fervent convert to Christianity. At St. Germain imagines it, they meet politely and soon lock horns over the existence of God and the meaning of life, as the world teeters on the brink of World War II. Dennis Creaghan as Freud and Christopher Oden as Lewis are very engaging, but don’t take my word for it: Go look up the recent rave review the West Palm Beach company got from The Wall Street Journal. Through Sunday only. Call (561) 514-4042 for tickets. – H. Erstein

Music: Paul Bowles is an unusually interesting American writer, an expat who went the distance, and not in Paris or London, but in Tangier, Morocco. But as a young man he was a composer first and foremost, and tonight at the DeSantis Chapel on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic University, Bowles’ rarely heard Concerto for Two Pianos gets a hearing at a concert of the student PBA Symphony. Duo Gastesi-Bezerra will do the honors for this 20-minute, four-movement work that conductor Lloyd Mims says reminds him most of Milhaud. The Bowles is joined by a world premiere: Rayos de Esperanza, for two pianos and strings, by PBAU faculty member Marlene Woodward-Cooper, a fine composer. The orchestra shares the stage with the PBAU Symphonic Band under David Jacobs, who will conduct music by Holst (the Suite in E-flat), Grainger (Lincolnshire Posy), Piston (Tunbridge Fair) and Hovhaness (Suite for Band). Tickets are $10; call 803-2970 or visit www.pba.edu/performances.

Also tonight: Violinist Elmar Oliveira hosts a concert of chamber music at Lynn University featuring a number of his colleagues at the Boca Raton school. On the program at the Wold Performing Arts Center are the Sonata No. 3 of Bach (BWV 1005), the Piano Trio No. 4 (in E minor, Op. 90, Dumky) of Dvorak, the too-rarely heard Septet for Trumpet, Piano and Strings of Camille Saint-Saens, and the lovely String Sextet No. 1 (in G, Op. 36) of Brahms. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20-$35. Call 237-7607 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.

And speaking of chamber music: The Delray String Quartet introduces the third concert in its seasonal series starting this Sunday at the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach. After the last program’s survey of Russian music (Shostakovich No. 7, Arensky No. 2), the foursome plans music by Mendelssohn (Quartet No. 3 in D, Op. 44, No. 1) and Dvorak (Quartet No. 10 in E-flat, Op. 51), along with an arrangement of Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1, in honor of the bicentenary of the composer’s birth. The concert begins at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Colony on East Atlantic Avenue; tickets are $35. Call 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.com.

Now five years old, Florida Stage’s annual 1st Stage New Works Festival got the most important thing right immediately.

Where too many reading series elsewhere are dead ends for the scripts being unveiled, the West Palm Beach company has been committed to graduating at least a couple of the festival entries to full production each year.

This season, for instance, Florida Stage subscription audiences have already seen or will see Cane, Goldie, Max & Milk and The Cha-Cha of a Camel Spider, all three of which were first heard by the public at last year’s festival. And judging from the just-completed 2011 fest, there is every reason to think that commitment to selecting new work from 1^st Stage for subsequent seasons will continue.

Certainly there was quality writing on display at the Kravis Center’s Persson Hall, the black box space across the breezeway from Florida Stage’s new home at the Rinker Playhouse. There, at bare-bones readings -- no sets, no costumes, no props, but three dozen of the region’s best actors -- seven scripts inched closer towards becoming part of America’s stage literature.

True, producing director Louis Tyrrell hedged his bets a bit by relying on writers that he had produced previously -- Lewis, Christopher Demos-Brown, Deborah Zoe Laufer, Andrew Rosendorf and Israel Horovitz -- but he also gambled on two artists new to playwriting, actor John Herrera and visual artist Kew Henry.

A nice tweak to the program, probably born out of necessity, caused the readings to be compressed into 51 hours of a weekend, a total immersion that emphasized the festival atmosphere -- and probably increased the alcohol intake on the breaks and at the receptions.

Lewis scored with his latest script, The Americans Across the Street, a dark comedy with a wonderful curmudgeon at its center, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Derek Slaughterhouse, now late on his deadline to his publisher because he spends most of his time on his front porch, ranting against his neighbors and the world at large.

A plot of sorts kicks in when his estranged, widowed, now destitute sister arrives with her precocious teenage daughter, intending to stay. Among the good news is that they do not soften the old codger much and that acid-tongued Gordon McConnell has, and gives, great fun as Derek. If only Lewis would blue-pencil a lot of a wheezy comic sequence involving hallucinatory mushrooms, the script would be production-ready.

Also ready for prime time is Israel Horovitz’s Beverley, about two former World War II flyboys, one a Yank and the other a Brit, now in their 70s, and the title character, the love of both their lives. After the war, Beverley married the American, and now, 60-some years later, the Brit arrives on their Gloucester, Mass. -- Horovitz’s favorite theatrical setting -- doorstep to convince her to run, well, walk, off with him. The dramatic tension widens as Beverley‘s West Coast talent agent daughter returns home with all of her built-up resentments from her youth intact.

The results are thoughtful and entertaining, with an added layer of charm at the reading supplied by two-time Tony winner Frances Sternhagen as Beverley. Surely she is reason enough to produce the play whenever her schedule permits.

A Florida Stage discovery, Miami lawyer Christopher Demos-Brown (When the Sun Shone Brighter) brought to the festival a richly comic family reunion play, Captiva. At its center are three grown siblings, the youngest of whom has invited the family to their childhood vacation spot to meet her fiancé. But there is trouble brewing with her relationship, just as there is a hurricane barreling towards them.

The script could use some tightening -- a frequent situation this weekend -- but Demos-Brown again demonstrates what a smart writer he is and, this time, how funny he can be. If Tyrrell is looking for the next installment is his Florida Cycle, this could be it. It seems unlikely that Demos-Brown will find more spot-on casting than Todd Allen Durkin as the older brother, delivering deliciously snarky punch lines.

Another frequently produced Florida Stage playwright, Deborah Zoe Laufer (The Last Schwartz, End Days), revealed a fascination with computer gamers, those obsessive young adults hooked on strategy-and-reflexes exercises. That has led to Leveling Up, about a quartet of aimless souls, one of whom is recruited by the National Security Agency to “play” their similar, but real, war games. The way it plays out in the script is a credibility-stretcher and the dull dialogue for these inarticulate characters does not help matters.

Henry may be new to playwriting, but she is from the Florida Stage family, since the name is an alias for visual artist Kathleen Holmes, who just happens to be married to producing director Lou Tyrrell. Her script, Poet, is a biography of Edgar Allan Poe, framed by competing muses of poetry and prose. Henry/Holmes has clearly done her homework, as the overlong script brimming with research factoids attests. Her best invention is those muses, but so far they only observe the action, instead of interacting with Poe.

Hardly new to the theater is Tony nominee John Herrera, whose first written script, the Hispanic family drama Tiempo de Amor, looks at two young Cuban lovers, who marry impetuously, despite her disapproving mother. Then, 40-some years later, their relationship is strained by family responsibilities and financial pressures. Herrera has a lyrical way with dialogue, but also needs to edit his script down. And a plot thread involving revolutionary/poet Jose Marti feels like an uneasy tangent.

Yes, most of the plays heard at this year’s 1st Stage need further work, but discovering that fact is exactly the point of the festival. And if the plays came out of the word processor with no need of revision, think how frustrating that would be for us critics.

Daniel Ellsberg was an anonymous military analyst working for a conservative think tank until 1971, when he ignited a national firestorm by releasing the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret expose of government decision-making about the Vietnam War. The epic document, detailing some 22 years worth of sensitive information, established a precedent for conscientious whistleblowers that resounds today, in the form of Pfc. Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks controversy.

Ellsberg, who will turn 80 in April, remains as politically active and engaged as ever, his popularity renewed by the 2009 Oscar-nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. In commemoration of the 40^th anniversary of the Pentagon Papers’ release, Florida Atlantic University will host Ellsberg for a lecture at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 16, at the Kaye Auditorium on the Boca Raton campus. Admission is $12.

John Thomason, who reviews film and DVDs for Palm Beach ArtsPaper, talked to Ellsberg by phone late last month:

Thomason: How’s your afternoon going?

Ellsberg: The afternoon is OK. I just finished an interview with a Swedish television program for next week on WikiLeaks and what’s happening in the Middle East.

Thomason: Yes, you’ve been in demand a lot lately.

Ellsberg: Well, because of WikiLeaks, the analogy to the Pentagon Papers period is so strong that it’s mentioned all the time, so people have been turning to me in a way they haven’t for quite a while.

Thomason: Do you find it’s an accurate comparison?

Ellsberg: Yes, I think basically so. It’s inevitable. Of course, there’s major differences, but there are fundamental similarities. It’s the first large-scale release of classified information from inside the government by an official whistleblower since the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. There really hasn’t been anything like it in between. So the comparison is inevitable, even though the content of what’s released has some significant differences. The Pentagon Papers were top-secret, very sensitive, high-level decision-making papers by the Joint Chiefs and the top officials of the government on policy-making; these are field-level reports, largely, or in the case of the State Department cables, relatively low-level secret, rather than top secret, documents, so they don’t reveal as much about decision-making as the Pentagon Papers did.

On the other hand, the current ones have the advantage of being, well, more current than the Pentagon Papers were. The most recent of those were at least three years old, and in this case, the documents go right up to last year, which means the new Obama Administration. And one of the secrets, you might say, that’s revealed in these papers, is the same as in the Pentagon Papers, and that is how great a degree of continuity there is in policy, even between administrations that claim to be very different. There’s not a lot of difference in what we can read in the State Department cables of 2009 from 2008, and the policies and general approach seem very similar, including the persistence of practices of torture and a failure on our part to do anything to resist that. After all, this is an administration that promised to end torture, and we have not done that, as was made clear in the cables. We’re turning prisoners or suspects over to Iraqis knowing that they’ll be tortured, and that’s as illegal under both international and domestic law as if we were torturing them ourselves.

Thomason: Would you support a 2012 primary challenge from the left against the Obama Administration, by a candidate who might stand up for these issues?

Ellsberg: Yes. That’s the first time I’ve been asked that, by the way. That’s interesting; what prompted you to bring that up?

Thomason: It’s been on my mind lately. I just don’t know if it’s very viable. It seems like something that might be more symbolic.

Ellsberg: If we had a plausible candidate at all – we’re talking about a very expensive effort here, a big-scale effort and one that isn’t worth doing without some candidate that would get attention – I could indeed support such an effort, even though I think the chance of it succeeding and actually giving us a new candidate is close to zero. So the question would be, is it worth doing without any real prospect of actually changing the candidacy? I think it might be and might not be. It would depend on circumstances that develop over the next year. But I can’t imagine it couldn’t be worth doing in order to establish the point that what President Obama is pursuing any many respects in Afghanistan and Iraq is just intolerable. It’s intolerably costly and risky, especially in terms of his policy in Pakistan – a covert war in Pakistan is an extremely risky policy. And we have no justification for the killing we’re doing in Afghanistan. It has no prospect of achieving any legitimate interests or benefits for us, and it’s costing $100 billion a year or more that we obviously cannot afford, and it’s being taken out of programs that we do need. So it’s a disastrous policy.

Now, there’s no question in my mind that what the Republicans offer now and I’m sure two years from now is significantly worse, so I would have no interest at all in some kind of third-party run that would increase the chances of a Republican victory. And I would oppose that just as I felt that Nader’s campaign in 2000 was run in a way that was very costly to our country, that it helped give us eight years of [George W.] Bush, and I certainly would not want to be a part of that. But in terms of a strong, principled statement of opposition to the policies Obama is actually pursuing, I would want to be part of that, and I am part of that.

Thomason: Half the country, it seems, already seems to think Obama is headed toward some kind of European socialism. So I’d hate to know what they thought of a really left-wing candidate.

Ellsberg: Well, that’s simply absurd. Remember, after all, that most of the country believed, I’m sorry to say, that Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11 and was tied in with Al Qaida. In fact, a very large fraction believes that today. Well, I would put it to a member to the press, yourself let’s say, do you feel any responsibility for this? Not that you’re responsible for it directly, I’m sure, but being part of a profession that has failed so badly, this institution to educate the American people of simple realities? In other words, with all our free press, which is, for a large nation, one of the freest in the world, how can the public be entirely misled? How about the belief in WMD in Iraq and so forth? The government’s ability to fool the people is quite spectacular. Lincoln said, “You can’t fool all the people all the time.” Well, you don’t need to. You just need to fool enough of the people enough of the time. And our government and other interests in our country, such as corporations, seem to have that pretty well in hand.

Thomason: It seems to be a combination of deliberate misinformation campaigns and people who, no matter how many times they hear the truth, they just don’t believe it – like the birthers, for instance.

Ellsberg: Right, well, they are a minority, but this point that you mention regarding Obama as a leftist is just bizarre. But these days, a lot of Republicans believe that. I mention that not just because it’s wrong but because it’s so extremely wrong as to be almost laughable. Merely by saying it, they can get a lot of people to believe it.

Thomason: Whom did you initially support in 2008?

Ellsberg: It was more or less symbolic, but I agreed with [U.S. Rep. Dennis] Kucinich’s platform in the primaries, and I stuck with him to help him get a voice for his proposals. I thought his positions were very good. But then, once the nomination was made, I certainly supported Obama. And as I said, I would again, with all my reservations about him, in opposition to his opponent.

I don’t expect my talks in Florida to focus on domestic politics; they never have throughout my career, and I don’t purport to be any kind of authority or leader on such matters. If people ask me, I answer the questions, but this isn’t the subject of the lectures.

Thomason: What is this upcoming lecture appearance about?

Ellsberg: I’m asked to talk about the implications of secrecy in our society, and WikiLeaks, and the analogies to the Pentagon Papers, and my attitude toward whistleblowing, which is something I do want to encourage. I think we have too little of it, not too much, and that the extreme mess we’re in, in the wars in the Middle East and also matters like climate and the economy, do not reflect too much truth-telling or leaking, and too little secrecy, but quite the contrary. Even the bank meltdown is an example of something where insiders telling the truth about deception within their own organizations and illegality by their organizations could have prevented much of the catastrophe that overtook us. And that’s also true on climate, where several administrations collaborated, one after the other, in denying the import of climate warnings we were getting.

I do think that for people on the inside to reveal that the knowledge of these matters are known inside and that the public denials are consciously false is a very useful activity, even when it has great personal costs. Part of my message, why I’m trying to encourage such whistleblowing, is that it’s not guaranteed to help at all, and that it usually carries very heavy personal costs, in the corporate world or in the government. And whether it results in prosecution or not, the effects on careers are very great.

Thomason: Your life was famously threatened in the years following the release of the Pentagon Papers. In some ways, the threats resemble plots from Mafia movies. Do you still feel threatened today?

Ellsberg: Interesting question … I think that surveillance today is enormously greater than it was in those days, whereas it took a White House operation to institute a lot of illegal surveillance on me at that time, including a burglary of my former psychoanalyst’s office. That was then a covert operation, and when it was exposed, it threatened Nixon with prosecution or impeachment, and he had to resign. Now, such burglaries of my private information, let’s say, are regarded as legal under the Patriot Act. The use of CIA against me would now be legal.

And even -- you talk about Mafia movies -- but the effort made to “incapacitate me” by Bay of Pigs veterans working for the CIA, was a covert operation, clearly illegal. Nowadays the president makes no secret of the fact that he has put American citizens like Anwar Al-Awlaki on a hit list of assassination abroad, and that could happen in this country, too. So I would say the risks for everyone who is dissenting or protesting or criticizing or exposing are greater, and that includes risks of illegal action.

So to answer your question directly, I would now put it much higher than I am under more surveillance simply as a supporter of WikiLeaks than I was 30 or 40 years ago, and even more than I would have been a few years ago. I’ve been a protester of U.S. policies for a long time, but I didn’t think that the government would regard me as important enough to be surveilling my telephone calls and e-mail and what-not. And when I say surveillance I don’t mean real-time, in that someone is listening at every moment, but that everything is being recorded. I don’t think you have to be important anymore to get that. I think the NSA routinely records a vast amount of internal communication, and I expect to be included in that. So, since you’ve asked, I would assume this very call is being recorded.

Thomason: I appreciate that you’ll be giving this talk at a college, because it doesn’t seem like college campuses are ground zero for activism like they were when you released the Pentagon Papers. Do you feel like my generation could use a lesson on how it’s done?

Ellsberg: Tell me what your generation is … how old are you?

Thomason: I’m 28. I went to school when the war in Iraq was at its bloodiest, and it seems my generation fit the cliché of caring more about American Idol than their country engaging in an unjust war.

Ellsberg: Yeah, well, it seems to be true of the older people as well, when you come down to it. It isn’t just that the youth are less interested than their parents. It’s just that nobody is. The difference in the ‘60s and ‘70s is that there was a youth movement. It wasn’t a general population movement of dissent. It was youth. And we haven’t seen that for a long time now. I’m not entirely clear why; maybe you know better. I think it’s partly economic differences. People are more concerned with finishing education and getting ahead. But I don’t know why we haven’t seen that. Interestingly, in what we’re seeing now in Tunisia and Egypt seems to be youth rising up in a way that they haven’t seen there for a generation, and that does reflect the Internet, which didn’t exist before. Our young people now are much more involved in the Internet than their elders, and conceivably that will make some difference here, though it hasn’t yet.

Thomason: You’ve mentioned Iraq and Afghanistan probably more times in our conversation than I’ve heard on the news in months.

Ellsberg: Ha-ha. Well, of course WikiLeaks brought both of those in the news for a while at least, so I contradict you there in the sense that the Afghan war logs were released and then the Iraq war logs were released; that was a flurry, and it was in the last few months. But you’re right: We’re acting as if there’s no war going on in Iraq, which there is. It’s not totally peaceful there. And of course in Afghanistan, the war is getting bigger thanks to our involvement. American casualties just aren’t at the level to attract much attention. For the Afghans, the war is disastrous, but for America it’s a huge money cost, the acceptance of that is rather striking. Why is there this degree of acceptance?

It seems the only people are [U.S. Rep.] Ron Paul and [U.S. Sen.] Rand Paul, of all people, who are pointing to the costs of those wars as something we shouldn’t accept. But that might change. Here’s a case where at least part of the Tea Party may actually target the military budget and the wars – that may be a change that we didn’t see under the Democrats.

Thomason: You were arrested in Washington recently, in December, for protesting these wars. I thought that would have been news, but I only heard about it when listening to a far-left radio show, The Mike Malloy Show.

Ellsberg: Actually, on the Internet it got more attention than usual. I’ve gotten arrested a lot, and what I’m used to is no attention at all! So the fact that there was a picture of me in the Washington Post was a first. Other people were struck by how little there was; if anything, I was struck by how much there was, because I have to tell you, protestors usually don’t get much attention.

Thomason: Do you take your arrests as a badge of pride?

Ellsberg: Well, I think it was the right thing to do. I always enjoy being with the people who have decided to get arrested, many for the first time. I always find that they are people I like to talk to and be with and generally admire. So arrests have a very warm light for me because of the people involved. I think it’s something that citizens should regard as a part of their responsibilities part of the time, and that’s a small minority view, but I like being with the minority that feels that way.

Thomason: Do you consider yourself a controversial figure?

Ellsberg: That’s a fact. If controversy means varying views on me, and some very negative ones and some very positive ones, that’s the way it is.

[The Most Dangerous Man in America will be screened at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 15, at FAU’s University Theatre, followed by a talk by noted Vietnam War historian George Herring. Admission is free.]

It’s remarkable.

In a few short weeks, International Fine Art Expositions (IFAE) has transformed the Palm Beach County Convention Center from an über-cool, contemporary art warehouse that housed their Art Palm Beach fair into a refined country-manor home for the current American International Fine Art Fair (AIFAF).

At the entrance, a four-spout fountain sits, surrounded by plush greenery and a few delicate pink flowers. The polished concrete floors have been replaced by plush carpeting. Subdued track lights have replaced bright overhead lights. White-cube exhibit booths have been Martha Stewart-ized with alternating Wedgewood blue, vermillion red, steel gray and buttercream walls accentuated by white molding.

The convention center leapt from MOMA to Met — while we were sleeping.

The crowd seems to have changed as well. Rather than Latin accents, one now hears plenty of British and French ones. Women have gone from wearing silver Prada to pink Pulitzer. The young and trendy have been replaced by mature bluebloods. Even the parking lot has gone from BMW to Bentley.

The art is different, too, for the most part. Abstract paintings have been replaced by plenty of serene landscapes with ornate, gold-gilt frames. Marie Antoinette is no longer walking among us, though she can be seen in some of the works on display. There are now also antiques, ceramics and rare books. And the bada-bling has gone up a notch with the participation of high-end jewelers such as Graff, Scavia and Buccellatti.

In this genteel environment, one might almost forget that, for-the-pure-love-of-art notwithstanding, the AIFAF, which will be at the convention center through next Sunday, Feb. 13, is about selling. Yes, all of these beautiful people are here to buy and sell art, which is a relatively stable commodity right now.

The art market, unlike other sectors of the economy, has held, despite the precarious economy and post-Madoff private-collector decommissioning. Most buyers believe, along with William Gaddis, that “a work of Art redeems time. And buying it redeems money.”

The market for contemporary art, illustrated by last year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, seems to be bursting at the seams, but the tastes at AIFAF tend to more conservative genres.

“I deal mostly in 19^th-century and some contemporary realism. Our clients are successful and busy,” said Howard Rehs, a third-generation New York dealer and owner of the Rehs Gallery. “At the end of the day, they’re looking for something relaxing and calming to look at. They prefer figurative or landscape to abstraction.”

Moving throughout the fair, one could see that these traditional tastes transfer to more contemporary mediums, too, as demonstrated in works by photographer John Dugdale, who was on hand at the Holden Luntz Gallery booth. Dugdale is blind and was accompanied by an affectionate companion, a golden lab named Henley, who gently nuzzled up to visitor’s ankles. The artist’s studio is located in the Catskills, which may explain why his photographic work demonstrates the same glow that is seen in many Hudson River School landscapes.

Dugdale explained that he sees his work “in my heart.”

“I just recently lost the sight that I did have. But I have these images in my memory bank,” he said. Of the Catskills light, he noted, “It’s so lovely. You can’t get away from that golden light. It’s pervasive.”

That golden light was evident in many works throughout the fair, but strikingly evident in a very large landscape painting taking up the entire wall at New York’s Alexander Gallery Booth. Laurel Acevedo, who owns the gallery with her husband, stood in front of the work, The New World by Baron Jean Antoine Théodore Gudin, explaining its provenance and significance while engaging two private collectors.

Though Gudin worked at the same time as the Hudson River School painters he was not a part of the movement and worked mostly in Europe, though Acevedo noted that “he inspired Frederick Church.” One could easily see the influence.

“It’s a rare work to see because Gudin, though American, existed mostly in national collections in Europe. He was employed by two kings of France. This work was in the collection of a former secretary of state,” she said.

Some of the fair’s galleries crammed work into their booth space. Others presented work in a thought-out manner, such as the Renoir and Friends exhibit in New York’s Hammer Galleries booth. Though all the works are for sale, they’re presented in a curated exhibit, with accompanying catalog, something you don’t always see in an art-fair setting.

Hammer’s president, Howard Shaw, explained that the gallery has a history of presenting one-man exhibitions of Renoir’s works, having done so in both 1959 and in 1984. Because the Hammer Galleries recently relocated, the show wasn’t seen in New York, and Shaw chose to preview it here at AIFAF, a treat for visitors who will see works that illustrate Renoir’s influence on other great artists.

“While Renoir doesn’t fit neatly into the history of modernism because in his late work, he looked toward the old masters—whereas artists such as Monet and Pissarro embraced modernism—you wouldn’t be able to appreciate Matisse’s odalisques or Picasso’s nudes without understanding Renoir’s influence on them,” Shaw said.

While the majority of fine art offerings at AIFAF are geared towards 19^th-century figurative and landscape artists, there are a few galleries that present some modder offerings, such as Palm Beach’s Arcature Gallery and Miami’s Rudolf Budja Galerie.

And moving from art to look at, to art that you can wear, Scavia displays jewelry-as-art in original, elegant floral settings. The Graff booth is guarded by two tall, young models bedecked in evening gowns and jewels. And Buccellatti has what seems to be a tongue-in-cheek “hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil” three-monkey statue greeting visitors to its booth.

Complementing the dealers and their offerings, AIFAF is providing a robust program of lectures that brings scholars, artists and specialists to the lectern to discuss a range of topics. Those that collect and those that merely admire have the opportunity to both increase their knowledge and rub elbows with great art, all in an environment created with every detail intended for the uplifting pleasure of celebrating aesthetics and inspiring awe.

Jenifer Mangione Vogt is a marketing communications professional and resident of Boca Raton. She’s been enamored with painting for most of her life. She studied art history and received her B.A. from Purchase College.

The American International Fine Art Fair (AIFAF) runs through Feb. 13 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. Hours are noon to 7 p.m. daily through Saturday; noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 13. Admission is $10 in advance, or $15 at the door, for a one-day pass; $35 for a one-day pass with catalog; $15 in advance, or $20 at the door, for a multi-day pass; $45 for a multi-day pass with catalog. Student admission is $10. For more information, visit www.aifaf.com.

Lynn Philharmonia/Gunther Schuller (Jan. 29, Wold Performing Arts Center, Boca Raton)

“I am Chiayu!” the small woman wearing a red dress jacket almost shouted to the audience at the Wold Performing Arts Center as she took the stage at Lynn University in Boca Raton to introduce her new composition.

Chiayu Hsu, a Taiwan-born composer who earned her doctorate at Duke University, was the winner of the call for scores offered by the fifth New Music Festival at Lynn. Her short orchestral work, Shan Ko (Mountain Song), is the middle section of a trilogy that evokes the natural world of her native island off the coast of China.

The Lynn Philharmonia, under guest conductor Gunther Schuller, gave the first public performance of the work at the Jan. 29 concert (it had a reading by the Nashville Symphony last year), and it showed us a composer well-versed in the late Romantic tradition even if the language was considerably more modern. As a descriptive piece about a walk in the mountains, buttressed with a regional folksong to add color and building material, it had the kind of atmospheric writing you would expect.

It evoked Richard Strauss’ Ein Alpensinfonie and the Mahler Sixth Symphony, especially in the waves of glistening celesta in the middle, and in its general structure overall. It has clear, strong motifs that rise out of mysterious percussion in the beginning, and then break out in colorfully orchestrated sections amid very evocative sound-painting that makes wide and canny use of instrumental potentialities. Most of it is quite tonal, and its vivid scoring and muscular structure help it make a strong, almost epic impression.

It’s not particularly original, but it is well-crafted and effective, and it has an attractive bigness that is well-suited for its purpose as a piece of descriptive nature music.

The premiere was followed by a performance of the Piano Concerto No. 1 (in C minor, Op. 35) of Dmitri Shostakovich, with New Music Festival founder Lisa Leonard as the piano soloist and her husband, Lynn brass chairman Marc Reese, as the trumpet soloist.

Leonard demonstrated again with this strong, technically immaculate performance why she is one of the area’s most rewarding pianists to listen to. She brings to this music equal parts steel, flash, and poetry, and you can hear clearly that she has thought about how she wants to interpret every bar. It is satisfying music-making in the best sense, and from the slowly unfolding, gradually warming-up way that she played the first notes she had the audience lured in for the duration.

Reese also played quite well, with a forceful, powerful sound that fulfilled the composer’s use of it as a foil to the piano and to the string orchestra behind it. The Lynn Philharmonia strings had intonation difficulties in the early going, but by the finale were much more on point, and the conclusion of the concerto was suitably athletic and joyous.

The concert, which opened with a very shaky, out-of-tune reading of the Representation of Chaos prelude from Haydn’s The Creation, closed with a relatively decent version of the Third Symphony (in F, Op. 90) of Brahms.

Schuller led the Brahms in a no-nonsense manner of rather swift tempi and very little rubato, so that the contrasting wind theme in the first movement simply moved forward (with good attention to dynamics), and the traditional hesitations at its end, leading into a flexible, warm reply from the strings, were not there. And the second theme of the finale, where many conductors take advantage of the quarter-note triplets to broaden the tempo a little bit, also charged ahead in steady, unsentimental fashion.

Here, too, intonation was an issue in the first two movements, with some weak brass playing in the slow movement especially. But the cello theme of the third movement was a different story, and the solo horn played this theme ably when the time came, with accuracy if not notably beautiful sound. – G. Stepanich

Palm Beach Symphony (Jan. 24, Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, Boca Raton)

“It isn’t fair,” said the sweet elderly lady next to me. “I’m from Cleveland, and the Cleveland [Orchestra] begins on time.”

The Jan. 24 concert by the Palm Beach Symphony at Bethesda-by-the Sea Episcopal Church got under way at 7:25 p.m., some 25 minutes after it was supposed to start. With 80 percent of the audience present, late diners from a dinner organized by the symphony strolled in, perhaps unaware they'd kept everybody waiting.

Once the music began, it opened with Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture (Op. 62), written for a friend’s play of the same name. Smooth string playing, especially in the throbbing surge at the start, said that conductor Ramon Tebar meant business. As a concert warmer, though, it was wholly out of place with the rest of the program of two Ravel pieces and a light Schubert symphony.

In this church chancel setting, the full orchestra sounded muddy, and the brass section almost vulgar. It’s a very Germanic composition, and something by Debussy would have been a better choice in view of what was to follow.

After considerable chair shifting, nicely handled by two caring gentlemen, Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro for harp, string quartet, flute and clarinet set the tone for the rest of the evening. Kay Kemper sat front and center with her harp and played beautifully; the other six players behind her, no conductor. It was a magnificent 10 minutes of lush and magical music-making, with glissandos and crescendos tumbling from the harp and the sextet providing gorgeous moments of rapturous Impressionistic sounds.

A second Ravel piece, the four-movement Le Tombeau de Couperin, followed. What a contrast to Beethoven’s writing. In the fugal section, the brass sounded infinitely more gentle than they had done in the harshness of the Coriolan. The woodwinds sounded wonderful, almost piano-like on occasion: Ravel’s nod to Couperin’s keyboard skill, no doubt. The fast-paced Rigaudon, the last movement, was taken at breakneck speed, and the orchestra kept pace for a thrilling performance.

The second half of the program was given over to the Symphony No. 6 (in C, D. 589) of Schubert. Written when the composer was 21, the symphony is scored for an orchestra of the size of the Palm Beach Symphony. The work evokes the “Rossini craze” of the early 19^th century, with much Italianate writing in the woodwind ornamental figures.

Yet it also is unmistakably the work of the master of the Lied. Tebar coaxed some lovely playing from the orchestra in the tuneful first movement, and the second-movement Andante was like a minuet, quiet and stately with beautiful woodwind chords ending in pure serenity.

The lively Scherzo with its familiar-sounding tunes plugged along with reminders of Beethoven and his brassy chords (Coriolan again!). The finale had many graceful melodies unfolding one after another, all of which were tightly played by a very talented group of professional instrumentalists. – Rex Hearn