Editor’s note: Here are late reviews from recent concerts:

Cleveland Orchestra (Jan. 25, Kravis Center)

Slowly and surely since his death in 1975, the music of Dmitri Shostakovich has established itself as a vital and permanent part of the canon, with music from almost every genre in his output – with perhaps the exception of operetta and film scores – getting regular hearings and recordings.

At the time of the “old” New Grove Dictionary, in 1980, the prediction as expressed there was that Shostakovich’s symphonies would be the standard-bearers of his work. But that has not quite turned out to be the case. While the First, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth symphonies are regularly heard, the rest of them are harder to find on concert programs, and it’s been in concerti and chamber music most of all that Shostakovich has become a familiar concert face.

String quartets play all 15 of his quartets, as well as doing complete cycles, and works such as the piano trios and the quintet, the cellos and viola sonatas, plus his great cycle of preludes and fugues for solo piano, pop up everywhere. The first of his two violin, cello and piano concertos are standard fare these days, too, with perhaps the Second Piano Concerto, written for his son Maxim, coming into its own.

The Seventh, Eighth and Fifteenth symphonies should be programmed much more often, but the others present problems of one kind or another that make them harder to do. With the Sixth Symphony, though, no such problems (i.e., choruses, vocal soloists, instrumentation) exist, which leaves the work’s fate up to advocacy.

In Franz Welser-Möst, the artistic director of the Cleveland Orchestra, the Sixth has found a champion, and in the orchestra’s beautiful, muscular reading of this work Jan. 25 at the Kravis Center, audiences learned why they should know this piece much better.

The Sixth is tough to grasp because it starts with a long slow movement and is followed by two fast ones, which goes against the grain of the usual fast-slow-fast symphonic arc. Leaving aside the question of why that arc should still be with us, the music itself actually comes off as a return to vigor after a time of sadness, or perhaps a slow rising from the floor of a boxing ring.

Welser-Möst led his charges, in town for a runout on their annual Miami residency, through a most persuasive account of the work, beginning with an opening theme in the lower strings that was straightforward and sober, not overwrought, which is good wood for building. There was distinguished playing from each of the instrumental soloists that play such an important part of the sonic landscape at the end, and careful attention paid to the trill-and-suffix that runs throughout, with different shades of meaning brought to it each time.

The second movement Scherzo had a welcome lightness that contrasted well with the drawn-out agony of the first. Welser-Möst wisely avoided the temptation to stress the sardonic aspects of the music and kept it lilting, so that the final scales in the upper winds evaporated rather than parked on an upper level.

And the finale is a barn-burner, one orchestras should look forward to doing. Again there was a basic lightness of approach, and quite a fast pace, that made the music more exciting, more fun. Concertmaster William Preucil’s midway solo was right in keeping with the spirit of the proceedings, and the climactic closing bars, full of brass and percussion, came as a joyful explosion after the orchestra had worked up a tremendous head of steam.

The Shostakovich ended the concert, which began with a performance by the Russian-born pianist Yefim Bronfman of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 (in B-flat, Op. 83), and was followed by a new work, American composer Sean Shepherd’s Wanderlust, a three-part tone poem.

The Shepherd work, which evokes the young composer’s Nevada home, the British town of Aldeburgh (and its most famous resident, Benjamin Britten), and the Gehry museum at Bilbao, Spain, is distinctive primarily for its explicit colors. Shepherd is a composer with a good feeling for them, and in the first movement (Prevailing Winds), there is a good deal of high flute and piccolo sound-wash contrasted with brass groupings, all of it creating a mood of dust and wind.

The second movement, Seagulls on High, is even more atmospheric, with a soft wind chord heard early that anchors the outbursts of instrumental extravagance throughout. The third, Bilbao, has a repeated three-note motif running through it that was played by the violas with a deliberately mechanical, impassive regularity.

This music’s interest lies primarily in the skill with which the various color bursts are scored. For all the volume that he calls for in parts of the piece, overall it is gentle and delicate, and he tends to score with a Debussy/Ravel-style sense of instrumentation, one with plenty of air beneath it and in its spaces. Brasses, for example, tend to be used as big, soft supports for the strings and the winds, not as mighty deliverers of chorales or bombast.

The concert opened with the Brahms concerto and Bronfman, one of its frequent practitioners. Bronfman has specialized in big-fisted repertoire such as this work and the Rachmaninov Third, and he was able to supply much in the way of massive sound at the concert.

The performance as a whole had something of a lumbering quality about it. The second movement was taken at a pokey tempo, and when the strings entered with their downward line, they did so demurely, rather than with strength and drama, and it took Bronfman to show them the aggressive way to play it at the end of the movement, when the roles were reversed.

The horn solo in the first movement and the cello solo in the third were entirely beautiful, and soloist and orchestra meshed lovingly, with Bronfman perhaps coming in a little bit ahead at the ends of the movements, particularly at the end. But while his playing was not entirely spotless, it had grandeur and weight, which is perfectly suitable for this music. – Greg Stepanich

Euclid Quartet (Jan. 24, Flagler Museum)

The four young men from four corners of the world who make up the Euclid Quartet proved Jan. 24 that music is indeed the language that breaks down barriers and cultural differences.

The Euclids played their hearts out for the full house attending their concert at the Flagler Museum, a go-to venue for quality musicianship of this kind in Palm Beach. The setting alone, a fine neo-baronial hall built by the great railway mogul Henry Flagler, is worth the experience. Upon entering, one gets a sense of the Gilded Age in America. And your ticket includes champagne and hors d’oeuvres served after the concert while you have a chance to meet the artists, which continues the exceptionally high quality.

Why Euclid? Because, explained John Blades, executive director of the Flagler, Euclid Avenue in Cleveland is where quartet was formed. It is a center for culture and, coincidentally, the place John D. Rockefeller and his company secretary, Henry Flagler, made their fortunes in oil. Flagler used his money to build railroads to Florida. A billion Flagler dollars, dispersed among various trusts in America, yields $50 million for the arts and similar activities annually, Blades said.

Winners of the prestigious Osaka International Chamber Music Competition, the Euclids are based at Indiana University-South Bend. They opened their program with Haydn’s Quartet No. 54 (in B-flat, Op. 71, No. 1), written in 1793.

It begins with thickly textured chords, played vigorously by the Euclid. They have a beautiful tone which was made to sound even more lovely by the live acoustic of this hall, most suitable for chamber groups. Their fresh attack and quality put me in mind of the Emerson, whom I heard in December. The cello seemed too dominant at first, but cellist Si-Yan Darren Li, sensitive to the others, adjusted his level of playing and blended in perfectly.

The second-movement Adagio has an underlying cello accompaniment at its center that Li played beautifully. In the minuet, the music danced along; violist Luis Vargas, dancing on his seat, looked as though he was about to burst into song. A fine balance of all four instruments was achieved here. The final movement, Vivace, was taken very fast. It displays exuberant syncopations and a drone-like bass. The quiet, surprise ending had nobody fooled in this audience, who recognized first-class musicianship with warm applause.

Puccini’s short composition, Cristantemi (Chrysanthemums), followed. It was written when Puccini learned of the death of Amadeo I, the former king of Spain, in 1890. He seldom wrote pieces for string quartets, but was obviously moved to do so here, writing it in one night. It echoes the French impressionist style of Debussy. The Euclid played it exquisitely.

Grieg’s First String Quartet (in G minor, Op. 27) ended the program. Based on a poem of Ibsen’s, The Minstrel, it’s the tale of disappointment in love, which may have had some significance to the composer, who was obsessed by this theme during composition.

The first movement is quasi-orchestral in it scoring, with hints of the composer’s Piano Concerto, Wedding at Troldhaugen and Peer Gynt. The second movement is almost song-like, with some excellent high notes played on the first violin by Jameson Cooper. There’s a longing Grieg manages to convey here that digs into the human psyche. The third movement, a brief Intermezzo, has enormous charm. The first and second violins play a melody over plucked strings on the cello and viola. Second violinist Jacob Murphy is the consummate teammate for Cooper, reliable and steady in all his playing.

The melody finds nowhere to go and ends up in the rhythm of a halling, the Norwegian folk dance played in turn by each instrument. It’s catchy and fun, and familiar. For some reason best known to Grieg, the last movement shifts from the fjords and waterfalls to Italy for his finale, a tarantella. But the longing returns in the last few bars and we are back in Grieg’s homeland.

This foursome reminded me not just of the Emerson but the Tokyo String Quartet, and it might be that they deserve to rank in that august company. The Grieg quartet, in any case, received a brilliant reading, and was met by a well-deserved standing ovation.

We were, after all, in the presence of great artistry. – Rex Hearn

Palm Beach Opera 50^th Anniversary Gala (Jan. 20, Kravis Center)

Anniversary celebrations of opera companies can be awkward and inward-looking. What is there to do but sing? I’ve attended many such occasions. Some were boring, some too long. And quite a few, full of self-centered pats on the back.

It was not so at Palm Beach Opera’s Golden Jubilee on Jan. 20 (the concert was repeated Jan. 22). Packed houses in the Kravis Center were treated to five opera scenes in two hours, and short, sharp, precise comments on the history of the company. Written by its general director and co-host, the suave Daniel Biaggi, his was a polished performance, exuding all the confidence needed to face the next 50 years.

A lot of planning and rehearsing went into this important event, and it ran smoothly. The opera stars were stellar, and in top vocal form, as was Bruno Aprea, the artistic director and conductor. This celebration, including the sets, was underwritten by Helen Persson’s gift of $1 million. Angels like Persson are few. Her generosity is a living example to today’s rich young computer barons.

The Googles, Facebooks, Amazons, Apples and such must repeat what the Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Ford and Rockefeller fortunes did for the arts in America’s 19^th and 20^th centuries. Which young wizards will step up to take the lead, show they know their civic duty, and be remembered as the greatest artistic philanthropist of the 21st century?

The retired baritone Sherill Milnes, the other co-host, spoke of his 40 years in opera and

had a funny story about singing his first Germont as a young man. He had to arrive early to disguise himself as an older man with makeup. As he grew older, all he eventually needed was 10 minutes because his natural looks took over.

Selections from Verdi’s La Traviata opened the event. Soprano Sarah Joy Miller sang a delightful Sempre libera, with all the tough high notes and trills intact. Her voice could use some more focus, but she gave the evening a thrilling start.

Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus followed: Lauren McNeese, mezzo, was a convincing Prince Orlofsky, a pants role. And the wonderful soprano Ruth Ann Swenson gave us a glorious Czardas.

Brazilian tenor Atalla Ayan and Swenson as Rodolfo and Mimi, respectively, gave a lovely performance of the famous love duet from Act I of Puccini’s La Bohème. Ayan’s tenor was perfect for Che gelida manina, and their two voices blended beautifully as they walked offstage.

The highest points came for me in the extracts from Bizet’s Carmen. Denyce Graves-Montgomery was smashing in the Habanera. Her full-throated mezzo sound is beautiful, rich and unique.

Even better was the clash between Graves-Montgomery and tenor Brandon Jovanovich in the Act IV excerpt that came next. Carmen refuses Don Jose’s love, and he stabs her to death. Jovanovich was convincing and brilliant in his vocal delivery of this stressful, wide-ranging piece. These two fine artists were met with rapturous applause, again and again.

What better work than the Grand Finale from Act II of Verdi’s Aida to end the program? Soprano Angela Brown was magnificent as Aida, and the choristers of the Palm Beach Opera were superb in this and their support of all the other scenes. Bravo to them, and to chorus master Greg Ritchey.

Stage director Dona Vaughn made the whole event run slickly, in the best sense of that word. This was an anniversary concert that will stay in the memory for a long time to come. And after all that, the best thing to say is: Here’s to the next 50 years. – R. Hearn

Editor’s note: Here are late reviews from three concerts held earlier this month.

Adaskin String Trio (Jan. 10, Flagler Museum)

The Adaskin String Trio did something at its Flagler Museum concert that only the better chamber groups do: Play unusual, rarely heard material with the same kind of commitment they expend on the standards.

In its program Feb. 10 at the Flagler, which opened the five-concert series at the Whitehall mansion, the Canadian threesome presented a classic work of Beethoven with lesser-known pieces by Haydn, Ernst von Dohnanyi and Miklos Rozsa. The member seemed to greatly enjoy the resonant acoustic of the Flagler, which helped amplify and fill out their sound.

The Adaskin also played each of the works with bigness and power predominant, opening with the String Trio No. 4 (in C minor, Op. 9, No. 3) of Beethoven. This is a terrific early Beethoven piece, and in his favorite dramatic key; the Adaskins stressed its high emotional temperature right off the bat by playing its opening four-note gambit with enormity and sweep, then moving on with a brisk, almost breathless tempo (and taking the repeats as well).

After clearing up some intonation difficulties, the Adaskins – violinist Emlyn Ngai, violist Steve Larson and cellist Mark Fraser -- followed the first movement with an equally intense slow movement, in which attention to detail was clear, with nice touches such as the super-soft three-note tag that closes the main theme; in addition to its remarkable quiet, it also had a bell-like tonal quality, almost like chimes.

The Scherzo was huge, forceful and exciting, and beautifully played, though the C major moments could have used a lighter touch and a greater sense of contrast. The trio closed with a muscular, exuberant finale, played with a good feel for Beethoven’s rough-and-ready wit. All three members worked together most admirably in what is after a more intimate unit than a quartet, and more exposed at that.

For the Hadyn Baryton Trio No. 65 in G (Hob. XI: 65), played here in string trio transcription (though it would be lovely to hear the baryton itself one day), is one of many delightful such pieces Haydn wrote for Prince Nicholas Esterhazy, and it’s a shame this music isn’t better-known. While clearly written for an ensemble of limited compass, it’s wonderfully companionable music, with a primary-colors kind of feel that the Adaskins did a good job of bringing across.

In the second-movement Minuet, for example, the trio played with a graceful kind of lilt that linked it strongly to rustic sources, and in the finale, made the most of the work’s intrinsic charm. Overall, though, this was a strong, forthright reading of the piece, with no sense of lace or fragile china.

The Op. 1 of Miklos Rozsa, a Czech composer who went on to write film scores such as Ben-Hur, is a Serenade for string trio, written when Rozsa was just out of his teens. It is a fine score, idiomatically written for the ensemble and rich with folk color, as well as a touch of the salon.

Cellist Fraser was particularly fine here, in the secondary theme of the first movement, and in the third movement, when he echoed the beautiful, elegiac tune introduced lovingly by Ngai. The second movement, with its big Viennese-style swoop at the end of the main theme, has a slight touch of schmaltz, and the Adaskins indulged it just enough to make it beguile.

The finale had little of the brittleness to be heard on one of the available recordings of the piece, with the trio aiming for something more Haydnesque, bumptious and jolly rather than prickly. This was a very fine performance of this excellent work, and it’s hard to see how it could have received more persuasive advocacy.

The concert closed with the Serenade in C, Op. 10, of Dohnanyi, written in 1902, decades before the Hungarian composer would come to the United States, where he taught for years at Florida State University. The march that opens this five-movement work was played with a bright, crisp, highly accented approach that embodied youthful energy.

Violist Larson played the primary theme of the second-movement Romanza with great tenderness above the pizzicati in violin and cello, followed by Ngai leading the passionate middle section with plenty of sweep. The Adaskins took the third movement fugue very rapidly, which paid nice dividends when all three instruments took the theme in unison; meanwhile, the D major contrasting section had a firmly Brahmsian touch.

The fourth movement Theme and Variations was one of the high points of the performance, with its moody minor-key theme laid out in its introduction and its subsequent guises with exquisite care. The second variation, reminiscent of Tchaikovsky, and the third, again recalling Brahms, led ultimately to the fifth variation, a gorgeous transformation of the theme with slow-moving chords and a poignant cello answer.

The high-spirited Rondo finale was, like much of this concert, played with bigness and drive, and made a most exciting ending, especially as the themes from the other movements were brought in at the end.

The trio played a short encore, an arrangement of Hobo’s Blues, which Paul Simon wrote in 1970 with the great jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli. It had the fizzy flavor of 1930s le jazz hot, and was an attractive way to end this fine and revelatory concert.

Hye-Jin Kim (Jan. 9, Rinker Playhouse)

The South Korean-born violinist Hye-Jin Kim made a strong case for the music of Sibelius in her appearance Jan. 9 in the Kravis Center’s Young Artists series, which marked her Florida debut.

Sibelius, himself an occasional violinist, wrote a good deal of occasional music during his life, some of it salonistic but most of it less so, and Kim performed good service by including three of the Op. 81 pieces on her program. The three works she played at the Rinker Playhouse with the able pianist Amy Yang – Mazurka, Rondino and Valse – are preferable to many of the encore pieces violinists will seek out, such as those by Kreisler or Piazzolla.

The Sibelius pieces have a close kinship with Kreisler, but they have some beautiful textural detail, such as the folk-style piano strumming in the Rondino and the sweet coolness of the minor-key variant of the main Valse theme. Kim played these pieces winningly, and she obviously enjoyed doing so.

Kim, who trained at the Curtis Institute and the New England Conservatory, now teaches at East Carolina University. She is a violinist of sure and broad technique, perhaps a shade on the cautious side amid her excellent musicianship; there were several moments in the recital where some liberty would have been quite welcome.

The late and only Sonata of Leos Janacek, for example, is a piece of unrelenting, if lovable, strangeness, redolent with ostinati and little shards of melody plus odd violin effects. Kim was most persuasive here in the second movement (Ballade), which she presented with a haunted tone that suited the music beautifully. But the sonata overall needed a bit more of its jagged drama, some more attention to the quirkiness that makes it so distinctive.

Kim’s reading of the opening work on the program, Schubert’s Sonatina No. 2 (in A minor, D. 385), demonstrated the expert, polished approach she brought to all the pieces. A modest piece in structure, Kim played it with precision and clarity, but also a reserved Classical-style tone that suited its Hausmusik aims. She played the gentle theme of the second-movement Andante with surpassing loveliness, and the third-movement Minuet with a strong sense of rhythm. Yang was a good partner throughout.

The violinist also tackled the rarely heard Aus der Heimat, a late work (1880) by Smetana, and a sonatina in all but name. As in much of Smetana, the piano part is big and virtuosic, and Yang did a commendable job of not overwhelming Kim at peak moments. Kim has a strong sense of the emotionalism of the slow movement, which she played quite well, and of the kind of pacing that has to be brought to the last movement, which builds to a bravura climax.

The early Sonata (in E-flat, Op. 18) of Richard Strauss closed the program proper. Full of presentiments of tone poems such as Don Juan, it’s a large and showy work, and Kim answered the challenge with a much greater feeling of intensity and power. Her technical prowess was impressive here, but the music could have benefited from a touch of rubato at places such as the peak of the recap in the first movement, where the briefest slowing of the tempo at the climax would have helped really bring the message home.

The same goes for the finale: a little more warmth in the climactic moments, and we get the full measure of Strauss’ particular brand of Romanticism. But in general this was a big-hearted version of this sonata, and the appreciative house at the Rinker welcomed it.

For an encore, Kim chose one of the most familiar of all violin virtuoso chestnuts, the Zigeunerweisen (Op. 20) of Sarasate. And here the audience heard a different side of Kim, even to the point of a very different sound quality. This was all fireworks, all the time, and Kim played it with marvelous accuracy, perfectly drilled runs and a sizable helping of all-out show biz.

Semele (Opera in One Hour, Palm Beach Opera, CityPlace, Jan. 6)

Normally, I wouldn’t write about the One Opera in One Hour series at the Palm Beach Opera in a critical review because it’s usually an experimental one-off for the Young Artists troupe, and you can’t hold these productions to the same standard as the mainstage shows.

But the series is growing, and the Jan. 6 abridged version of Handel’s Semele, which encored Jan. 8 at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach, prompted a few thoughts I don’t see any reason not to share.

The good news is that in Canadian soprano Emily Duncan-Brown, the company found a winning Semele. She sang her biggest set piece, Endless Pleasure, Endless Love, with a big, easeful voice; her Handelian melismas never sounded strained, but a natural outgrowth of her characterization. And she acted well: She was sexy, warm and believably impetuous.

There was good supporting work, too, from mezzo and fellow Canadian Shirin Eskandani, who sang Juno with clear diction and a pretty, mature voice. American soprano Alexandra Rafalo was a decent Iris as well, although she had a couple intonation problems at the end of There, From Mortal Cares Retiring. But hers is a voice with an unusual, dusky tone quality that’s very attractive.

Benjamin Clements sang admirably as Cadmus, as did Kenneth Stavert as Apollo, but while Jesse Enderle was funny and musically adept as Somnus, his gentle voice was underpowered, and pianist Bruce Stasyna dialed his playing way back to accommodate it.

The bad news is that this workshop production was so minimalist as to be basically unstaged. This is a series that has offered delightful, offbeat ideas like a Cosi fan Tutte set amid workers in a Starbucks, and an Orfeo ed Euridice whose opening scene was at an arthouse cinema showing Chaplin’s Modern Times. But Andrew Nienaber did almost nothing here except clothe his singers in contemporary evening wear, play around with some blocks on a stage -- with dangerous, open holes in it -- and try to let the story take shape from there.

The worst offense here is that the abridgement was bafflingly odd, so odd that the best-known piece in the opera, Jupiter’s Where’er You Walk, was cut, which is unforgivable. Also gone was Myself I Shall Adore, which is just as unforgivable, especially because Duncan-Brown would have done it well. In place was lots of recitative, apparently in the belief that the story needed a lot of exposition.

In a situation like this, though, the best way to handle all that Handel is to do it some other way, say, with the supertitles over transition music, or perhaps a supernumerary holding signs while wearing a costume befitting the director’s concept (except that there was no concept). The point is that with a little bit of creativity, a way could be found to leave the opera’s most well-known music in the production and still get the whole story across in a third of the normal playing time.

This Semele also had a problematic Jupiter. Mexican tenor Evanivaldo Correa made a stiff king of the Gods indeed, grabbing Duncan-Brown as if he were trying to seize the last box of chocolate fudge Pop-Tarts in a BOGO promotion rather than a luscious mortal who’s made him forget he’s married. More importantly, his voice sounded strained and uncomfortable, particularly in the vocal runs. He could use some guidance on loosening up his instrument, because at its best, it’s got a very pleasant quality, as he showed in last season’s workshop reading of the zarzuela Luisa Fernanda.

And finally, it’s past time for these productions to be done with piano only. A recital program, yes, but not a mini-opera, especially when technology offers so many helping hands. How about a second keyboard? Use an electronic wonder like a Roland to add color and depth to the music and give the illusion of orchestral warmth.

The One Opera in One Hour shows are a great idea, and they’ve been used not only to give the Young Artists some more valuable stage experience, but to give directors a chance to try some fresh concepts and Palm Beach Opera itself to perform much more repertory. Now that this series is expanding, it’s a good time for the company to look at what works and what doesn’t, and keep them the special theatrical treat they are.

The Palm Beach Opera will present Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land in its next One Opera in One Hour presentation, set for 8 p.m. Friday at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace. Admission is free, but reserved seating is available for $15. For more information, call 833-7888.

The soprano who created the role of Magda in Giacomo Puccini’s La Rondine said late in life that the composer died “with the wound of ‘Rondine’ in his heart,” having never gotten over the opera’s mixed record of success and failure.

In its first-ever mounting of the bittersweet opera Puccini wrote for a Viennese commission, Florida Grand Opera has taken an important step toward healing some of that wound with an engaging, elegant staging that also should advance the careers of its principal singers.

Not everything works in this Rondine, but that’s mostly due to the third act of the opera and not the production, which is borrowed from New York City Opera and sets the action in the early 1920s, later than the original Second Empire backdrop. British director Nicola Bowie has managed the stage action well, with good business on the side in the first act, plenty of inviting action in the second, and a welcome dose of comedy and lightness in the third.

It’s the singing that matters most, though, in this lovely and unusual score, and in Elizabeth Caballero, FGO has found a soprano in its own backyard who owns the part and makes a very strong case for this opera. She has a big, powerful voice, and in her Chi bel sogno di Doretta in the first act, she laid claim to ownership of the stage with a super-soft high C, seizing the audience’s attention in good old-fashioned diva style.

A Cuban-American who came to Miami as a child on the Mariel boatlift, Caballero has long been a local favorite with FGO and area audiences, and she sang quite well on Saturday’s opening night. She showed her musical mettle in the third act particularly, making the most of the delicate gorgeousness of the passage in which she reads Ruggero’s mother’s letter (Figliuolo, tu mi dici), and just afterward, when she echoes her lover’s Ma come puoi lasciarmi in a higher key, and had plenty of vocal muscle left to do it.

Some of Caballero’s movements on stage were stiff, as if she wasn’t entirely comfortable with her body; her range of motion was less than it could have been, which made her character a little less compelling. And in her top register, particularly when she got louder, her voice got somewhat shrill and her vibrato quite wide. The largeness of her instrument compensates somewhat for that in what is a very difficult role to sing, but some of the vocal extremities here could use some more control.

As Ruggero, the Portuguese tenor Bruno Ribeiro has a thankless task in having to inhabit an underdrawn character, but he has a bronze-like, darkly colored voice that suited the earnestness of the young man who promises new love for Magda. This production includes the first-act romanza Parigi! E la citta de’ desidieri, which Puccini added later, and which deserves to stay.

Ribeiro sang a little under pitch here, especially at the end of the aria, and his singing in the rest of the opera, while admirable from the standpoint of good tone quality and secure placement, lacked suavity, which it needs for audience appeal and character veracity: he is, after all, a young, vulnerable man, and we need to hear that as well as see it. He was on the wooden side, in both singing and acting, but at his best his voice blended agreeably with Caballero’s, and the two made a good couple onstage.

La Rondine also is unusual in that it has two supporting tenor-soprano parts that have about as much work to do as the leads. And FGO has two excellent ones, which does a lot to make this production work.

As Lisette, American soprano Corinne Winters (whose memorable Sempre, libera at the Palm Beach Opera Grand Finals in 2010 stole the show), is marvelous, with a large, smoothly rounded voice that easily handled all the challenges of this role with aplomb. Only toward the end of the third act did her instrument weaken somewhat, but while it lost volume it didn’t lose accuracy.

She was a fine actress, too, in a fun part that allows her to be silly and sexy, and she made a wonderful foil for her Prunier. Winters looked great in her flapper and housemaid getups as well, and overall this was a most impressive performance.

Equally good was American tenor Daniel Shirley as Prunier, a singer with a cutting spinto who made audience ears perk up with a walk-on in FGO’s Luisa Fernanda in November. Here he could be heard at evening’s length, and he did a stellar job, singing with clarity, forcefulness and charm in every bar.

Shirley’s Prunier was lovable-rouguish, the kind of gregarious guest everyone likes at a party, and easily believable as the kind of man someone like Lisette would fall for. He and Winters made an ideal team, and they help carry the show.

As Rambaldo, the American baritone Craig Colclough was rather bland vocally and dramatically. He delivered his admonition to Magda in Act II rather perfunctorily, and he left with a creepily angry glare that seemed at odds with the steadiness of the character.

There were some fine other voices on stage, with American soprano Brittany Ann Renee Robinson first among them as Yvette, with Courtney McKeown as Suzy not far behind. John Keene’s chorus sang the big second-act brindisi expertly, though conductor Ramon Tebar drove the tempo a bit hard. This set piece should sound opulent, and it should gradually grow, but here it sounded determined to be big, and it came off too rigidly.

But in general, Tebar conducted this work admirably, with the youthful fire that distinguishes his baton work, and just as generous a helping of sensitivity, particularly in the most delicate moments. His orchestra performed beautifully for him, critical in Puccini, in which, like Wagner, so much of the psychological commentary and emotional mood is depicted in the orchestra.

This is a handsome Rondine, nicely designed by Ralph Funicello, with four strong principals advocating persuasively for this neglected score. The third act, as always, remains a problem, but perhaps in future productions some of the later revisions could be added in to give the ending a little more heft. For my way of thinking, it’s missing about another five minutes of material; it reminds me of Manon Lescaut in that the first two acts are brilliant, but the rest is something of a botch.

Still, if you’re a true Puccini devotee, this is an opera you want to see, and FGO’s production is good enough to argue for its inclusion in the general repertory as more than a one-off visitor. Caballero lobbied FGO general director Robert Heuer hard for a local production of La Rondine, and it’s a good thing she did.

La Rondine can be seen at 8 p.m. Jan. 24, 27, Feb. 1 and 4, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29, at the Ziff Ballet Opera House in Miami. Tickets start at $21. Call 900-741-1010 or visit www.fgo.org.

Crossover is something that Yi-Jia Susanne Hou believes in, and not just in music.

The Shanghai-born Canadian violinist, who played a solo recital in the Flagler Museum’s music series in 2009, is perhaps best-known for her work as a featured member of Bowfire, a multimedia fiddle extravaganza founded in 2000 that’s sometimes referred to as “Riverdance with violins.”

Hou says she’s fond of “blurring the lines” between the arts and other activities, and believes it serves the cause of art, and humanity, better.

“I like blurring lines, because I think a lot of lines exist for no reason,” Hou said over a late lunch Tuesday at Brio Tuscan Grille in Boca Raton, discussing a series of music-film-and-discussion programs she’s planning for a cruise line. “I don’t want the artists only to be on a pedestal onstage.”

Hou, 34, is a formidable violinist with an impeccable classical pedigree whose wide-ranging interests appear to be leading her into a multimedia-mogul direction. She’s the creator of a new show called Around the World of Music in 80 Minutes, a program of classical favorites from all over the globe, playing this week and next in Boca Raton.

Hou is one of several soloists, including singers, in the show, all accompanied by an eight-piece ensemble of string quartet, harp, piano, bass and percussion. There are tango and flamenco dancers, too, and the Fushu Daiko Japanese drum group. The ultimate aim, expressed in comfortable, unobtrusive staging -- “I wanted to enhance and highlight the performances” – is nothing less than bringing us all together.

“For the last 10 years, I’ve been making programs that visit all different kinds of music and cultures, because I love telling the audience how music influences each other,” Hou said. “How many things in our world draw people apart? But when you can listen to a piece of music, eat some food from a specific culture, it actually brings you closer to the people; you understand them.”

The show, which has played the Boca Community Church and the Coral Springs Center for the Arts, is now in the middle of a seven-show run at Boca’s Spanish River Church. Its final threee shows are set for 8 tonight and 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday night at the church on western Yamato Road. She describes it as “essentially a classical music showcase, but with all the production values of a show like Bowfire.”

The program “tours” roughly 16 countries including the United States, which is represented by Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer and a medley of George Gershwin songs including I’ve Got Rhythm, played by pianist Yuval Fichman. Italy is represented by arias from Puccini operas (O mio babbino caro, Nessun dorma, Recondita armonia, and O soave fanciulla, featuring soprano Teresa Eickel and tenor Daniel Montenegro), China by a set of folksongs arranged for Hou by Yang Bao Zhi, and Poland by Chopin’s posthumous Nocturne in C-sharp minor.

The Czech Republic gets its moment in Hou’s passport book with an arrangement by Hou’s father, Alec (Bo Zhi), of the Smetana tone poem The Moldau. A version of its famous melody (which Smetana borrowed from Swedish folk music) was used in turn as the tune for Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, which follows The Moldau on the program.

“I’m not doing this with religious intent, I’m not doing this to sing a national anthem or anything like that,” she said. “It’s to capture [the idea] that music provided, in the deepest, darkest moments, hope for people.”

Around the World of Music, whose title was inspired by the Jules Verne novel Around the World in 80 Days, opens with an arrangement of the Andante from Haydn’s Surprise Symphony (No. 94 in G, representing both Austria and England, where it was premiered), and closes with Hou soloing in the Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate’s take on Gypsy music, Zigeunerweisen (Op. 20).

Hou is planning future versions of the Around the World show, as well she might: Its current run is entirely sold out.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like that, and it was really fun,” she said. “It was an adventure.”

The remaining presentations tonight, and Monday and Tuesday night, of Around the World of Music in 80 Minutes at Spanish River Church are sold out, but interested concertgoers can get on a waiting list by calling 800-716-6975. Visit www.spanishriverconcerts.com for more information.

The Fifth String Quartet of American composer Kenneth Fuchs, which had its world premiere Sunday afternoon at the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach, is an effective piece of dramatic music first and foremost, with a big-boned grandeur that shares sonic space with an intense and hearfelt elegy.

Fuchs, a professor of composition at the University of Connecticut, grew up in Fort Lauderdale and wrote the work at the behest of the Delray String Quartet, which gave the premiere and will play it again Friday night and Sunday afternoon. The composer said in remarks to an appreciative house last Sunday that the quartet, subtitled American, is a reflection on his country in the post 9-11 era.

Formally, the quartet is laid out in four movements, the outer two essentially in A major and the middle two in the neighborhood of D minor, all with traditional attributes such as sonata-allegro form, a scherzo and a double fugue. Its language is tonal, occasionally minimalist, and highly accessible, with a blue-skies feeling to much of it that derives from Fuchs’ extensive use of counterpoint and individual lines.

All of the material in the quartet is derived from the opening theme, a long-breathed, slow, Coplandesque canon that starts with the first violin and continues down to the cello. It’s one of those themes that promises a lot, and its derivations later in the quartet were clear to discern, again because the solo-line texture Fuchs sets up at the beginning accustoms the ear to single them out. The Delrays played this opening, which is marked for a very slow tempo, much too quickly to make the proper transitional effect from its stateliness to the exuberance of the rest of the movement. Nonetheless, it was pretty and evocative, and was played with an admirable level of commitment.

The first movement sets a difficult challenge for the foursome, dominated as it is by a bustling variation of the theme that requires an athletic bow and precise intonation at a high rate of speed. The effect is one of great optimism and energy, and exciting to hear. Each member attacked the assignment with gusto, building up a big cathedral of sound before the music darkened and set the stage for the scherzo.

The second movement, an agitated Shostakovich-style march, turns into a movement of almost constant motion, with long passages of pizzicati and fast-stepping motifs played in unison by all four members. Early on, the viola plays a dark-hued melody derived from the theme over a nervous pizzicato in the cello that ends up extending for pages; violist Richard Fleischman and cellist Claudio Jaffé played this beautifully, giving it a strong sense of dark energy. This is a powerful, propulsive movement, and it got a fine performance from the quartet.

The third, marked Elegia, again hints at Shostakovich by starting (after a minor-key version of the opening) with a sad-carousel waltz theme in the second violin’s upper registers that gets taken up by the whole ensemble and ultimately turns into an aggressive, sardonic version of itself before what may be the elegy itself appears toward the end of the movement. This section also received a fine performance, though the very first bars could have been a good bit slower, more mysterious, to make a clearer contrast with the second movement.

And the music of the movement is cut from much of the same cloth as the second, which also made the two middle movements sound almost like one continuous piece. Perhaps if the second movement were played more drily, the differences would stand out better. Also, the elegy at the end, which received an intensely emotional performance, could perhaps be a little longer, especially as the movement itself is designed to be the heart of the work.

The finale returns to the open-prairie feeling of the first, with a fugue subject as close to a fiddle breakdown as it could get, and when all four instruments took their turn at it, the effect was joyful and confident. The last movement doesn’t introduce much distinctive new material, but it serves as a welcome return to the cheerfulness of the first pages. This also provided the quartet’s members with a major workout, and they pulled it off admirably.

The Colony audience applauded the piece vociferously, and there is no doubt about its ability to engage listeners. Kenneth Fuchs has written a fine piece of music in this quartet, one that could conceivably fill the new-music inclinations of American string quartet concerts in an absorbing way. It also seems to me that the last two movements could be rescored for string orchestra (call it Elegy and Fugue) and make a most attractive contemporary piece for chamber orchestras.

The Delrays will record this quartet later this month for an all-Fuchs disc on Naxos, and one looks forward to hearing the piece again, as well as to celebrating the composer’s achievement and the progress made by this homegrown string foursome.

That said, the rest of the concert demonstrated where the Delray quartet has its most persistent weak spot, and that is in the core Germanic repertory of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. This is a group much more successful with late Romanticism than the Classical period, and the first half of Sunday’s concert provided another example.

The first piece on the program was the Quartet No. 52 (in E-flat, Op. 64, No. 6) of Haydn, one of the composer’s late masterworks. Although the relatively rich opening was full and warm, the rest of the movement had a lot of rough playing. First violinist Mei Mei Luo’s triplets sounded labored rather than charming, and the quartet did nothing with the four-note back-and-forth extended passage except let the notes just sort of lie there. Further, the return of the opening material in a different, remote key needed much more color to make its impact.

The second movement was stronger, especially in the Sturm und Drang second section, but the third-movement Minuet sounded unsure on its feet, with a trio, again, that needed more contrast to stand out appropriately. The finale sounded much better-rehearsed than the first three movements, and it ended the piece with a good helping of Haydn’s celebrated wit.

Schubert’s Quartettsatz (in C minor, D. 703), which followed, also shortchanged the music somewhat, with the musicians playing cleanly and attractively, but not taking advantage of the subtler aspects of Schubert’s writing, such as the little key-shifting triplet motif that recurs throughout, and which cries out for some emphasis and shade.

The concert ended with a lush William Zinn arrangement of Bess, You Is My Woman Now, the duet from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. It was lush and lovely, but also could have used some more shape, perhaps most notably at the harmonic change that accompanies the bridge section beginning But I ain’t going.

The Delray String Quartet will repeat this program at 8 p.m. Friday night at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale, and again at 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove. Tickets are $20. Call 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.org.

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The Boca Raton Symphonia entered the Saturday lists as part of its first-ever two-concert weekend, and opened it with the first hearing of a new work by the retired orchestra executive who helped found the group seven seasons ago.

Marshall Turkin, who turns 86 this year, began his professional career as an arranger for the U.S. Navy while stationed at the Panama Canal during World War II, and then pursued life as a composer and jazz musician in New York thereafter. Life intervened, as it often will, and Turkin, who went on to lead the Pittsburgh and Detroit symphony front offices, took a hiatus of more than 50 years from his composing before returning to the multi-staved paper in 2010.

Turkin’s Five Brief Essays on One Theme turned out to be a well-crafted, skillfully orchestrated work in a style congruent with the Americanists of the last mid-century, and for me evoked writers such as Norman Dello Joio, Paul Creston, and David Diamond. The theme, taken from a piano piece Turkin wrote in 1954, had an attractive, searching quality, and the composer did some interesting things with it. The third essay, A Dream, contained a warm, engaging trumpet solo, and the fourth, A Joke, is a swift, sparkling movement that showed off Turkin’s knowledge of orchestral resource as lines went rippling through the instrumental fabric.

Several things to note: One might have expected a man in his mid-80s to write a nostalgic, syrupy piece that would have gone straight to the psyches of the older members of his audience, but he pointedly avoided that, much to his credit. Second, the piece is a little too brief, especially A Joke, which is far too short, and has plenty of material that could easily be expanded.

The third is that Turkin’s position as the founding president of the group surely helped win him the spot on the program, but he has written a real piece of music here, one that might have seemed quite retro only 30 years ago but whose language is now in step with its time. He has written another piece for the Festival of the Arts Boca (the Boca Fest Overture, set for debut March 14), and a perusal of the score shows its speech to be along the same lines, and also well worth a listen.

The bottom line here is that while the Five Brief Essays could be said to come out of a late-life hobbyist impulse, this is not the music of an amateur. Turkin was trained in composition at Northwestern, and by the evidence here, he must have been a diligent student.

But the concert Saturday night at the Roberts Theater at St. Andrew’s School also stood out for another reason: the pianism of Alex Kobrin. After the Turkin piece, Kobrin took the stage for the Beethoven Fourth Concerto (in G, Op. 58). A Van Cliburn Competition gold medalist in 2005, the Russian-born pianist now teaches at Columbus State University in Georgia and concertizes around the world.

Kobrin played this great work with an exceptional level of polish, every phrase carefully considered and buffed to a high sheen, and at the same time, he was fully alive to the nobility of the concerto. This is not a concerto with obvious fireworks; it’s more of an exercise in delicacy, tone color and melodic beauty than showboating. That requires a pianist with a strong sense of this work’s special, fragile balance, and in Kobrin, the Boca Symphonia had it.

The famous piano-only opening of the concerto, so daring and different from the usual contemporary model, was a statement of surpassing gentleness and intimacy in Kobrin’s hands, and it marked much of the future dialogue with the orchestra. Guest director Arthur Fagen had a better version of the Symphonia to work with here than music director Philippe Entremont did in the first concert of the season, primarily in that Fagen had a far stronger complement of violins.

Kobrin unleashed impressive athletics in the explosive cadenza of the first movement, one of the few moments of straight-ahead virtuosity in the piece. In the question-answer dialogue of the second movement, Kobrin played with exceptional poise against the peremptory drama of the strings, and in the finale, he again demonstrated a level of control in which rhythms were crisp and exact and runs glittered and gleamed. A lovely performance by a very fine pianist, and which might have been improved only by a slightly more aggressive, vigorous approach in the finale.

To close the concert, Fagen led the Symphonia in the Symphony No. 3 (in A minor, Scottish) of Felix Mendelssohn. A repertory work, but one that gets far less frequent outings than its Italian-themed sibling, and it was good to hear it. The orchestra gave it a decent reading, too, with a bubbly second movement (nice clarinet work here by Michael Forte) and good ensemble work throughout.

And that was the primary accomplishment; with a better string section, this orchestra sounded much more impressive. Fagen, a fine conductor, sounds as though he did some good drill work with the sections, and the result overall was a satisfying and often exciting concert for the group’s second seasonal outing.