The cellist Jonah Kim has spent several years concertizing and living in South Florida, including studies at Lynn University, all the while building a wider career from two other home bases in New York and Prague.

Tuesday night’s closing concert of the Stringendo School for Strings faculty series at Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Persson Hall showed why it is that he’s been successful.

Kim, a native of Seoul, South Korea, performed one of the great chestnuts of the cello repertoire, the Sonata for Arpeggione (in A minor, D. 821) of Franz Schubert, and played it with surpassing excellence: superb intonation, brilliant fingerwork, and a spirit of fun and discovery that he managed to evoke even though he’s surely played this piece many dozens of times.

With the able, expert accompaniment of Taiwanese pianist Yueh-Yin Liao, a doctoral student at the University of Miami, Kim simply took care of things, Schubert-wise, giving the piece everything it needed, from high-spirited, forceful rhythms to singing melody, and doing it with technical perfection.

But there was more to his performance than just spotlessness. He and Liao collaborated well on little touches such as the extra emphasis they gave to the final cadential figure each time it returned, and Kim also made a point of stressing the chromatic motif that leads back into the opening theme of the first movement, echoing it in the transition to the third movement.

His intense, cutting tone made his flawless arrivals in the A-string stratosphere stand out that much more, and gave the beautiful song of the second movement a pleading, heart-on-sleeve quality. Tying it all together was a sense of engagement that made this nearly 200-year-old music sound utterly fresh.

Kim was equally fine as the cellist in the showboat Passacaglia that the Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen built for violin and cello (originally viola) out of a keyboard suite by Handel. The violinist was David Mastrangelo, an able member of the Naples Philharmonic who, like Kim (who stood up for the last variation), couldn’t resist some physical theatrics as the piece traveled on its increasingly flashy way.

While Kim’s intonation was spot-on throughout, Mastrangelo’s was not, and in a piece like this, which is about dialogue and stuntsmanship, that made for some less-than-ideal harmonic clashes. Both musicians attacked their parts with verve and fire, and it made for an explosive ending to the concert that the large audience acclaimed.

The program also featured a rarity in the early Piano Quintet (in C minor) of the Russian composer Alexander Borodin. Like much of Borodin’s work, no doubt because the busy scientist really was only a part-time musician, it’s an uneven piece that’s saved by Borodin’s gift for exotic-tinged melody. Liao was the pianist, joined by Mastrangelo, second violinist Renata Guitart, violist David Pedraza, and cellist Claudio Jaffe.

Luckily for the ensemble, the piano tuning problems that plagued the third concert of this series had been taken care of, and that contributed to a smooth, delicately balanced sound overall. Much of this work has a back-and-forth tradeoff between piano and strings, and the strings blended nicely on their own when they weren’t playing with Liao.

This was particularly evident during the first movement, which after an elegant entrance by the piano settled into a comfortable, full-bodied sound. Tempos were on the slow side, and there wasn’t much in the way of storm or stress, but it was pleasant and attractive.

The Scherzo bustled along amiably enough, with good work from the ensemble, though the Trio tempo was a shade too poky, and the movement in general could have used more lift. With the return in the Finale to the mood of the opening, the group was on familiar ground; this was a fine reading of this interesting quintet, and the surprise quiet ending was well-judged.

Mastrangelo opened the concert with the second of the Belgian composer Eugène Ysaÿe’s six sonatas for solo violin (in A minor, Op. 27, No. 2), which borrows from the Bach E major Partita (BWV 1006) and the Dies irae plainchant melody that was also beloved of Berlioz, Liszt and Rachmaninov. The violinist introduced the work by playing the first movement of the Bach, which had spotty intonation and sounded like it was something of a struggle.

In the Ysaÿe itself, a monstrously difficult piece, Mastrangelo also had intonation difficulties at the outset (Prelude), but got things more aligned in the second movement (Malinconia), where Mastrangelo’s most distinctive sound, a delicate thinness in the higher registers, could also be heard. He handled the long passage of rapid arpeggios in the third movement (Dance of the Shadows) capably, and in the finale (The Furies) he addressed the more advanced harmonies forthrightly, without shying away, which is important to getting Ysaÿe’s on-the-fringe compositional aesthetic across.

The entire performance lacked a certain sense of nerve and drama, but aside from the tuning troubles, Mastrangelo took on this challenge well. Also, it helped show that the organizers of the relatively new Stringendo series are aiming high, and that’s welcome news for chamber music fans looking for sustenance in the South Florida summer.

For a country said to struggle with numbers, math and science, nobody is getting U2 360 degrees wrong.

At least in South Florida, everyone got what they came for.

The electrifying Irish band’s 360° Tour, with its supernatural stage, landed at Miami’s Sun Life stadium Wednesday night. One hour after the English indie rock band Florence and the Machine ended its magical opening performance, the knights from Dublin were still nowhere to be seen. The crowd grew impatient. When they finally came out, a little after 9 p.m., it was with Even Better Than the Real Thing that they decided to open the night.

It was one big happy crowd, despite the few rain drops that did materialize, and the sticky humid weather.

“Thank you, Miami. Muchas gracias. And thank for your patience,” Bono said between songs. “Some of you were two years younger when you bought tickets.”

He was referring to his back injury and surgery, which caused the Miami appearance the band had scheduled for last year to be delayed, and those who had bought tickets months before to wait even longer.

During the show Bono spoke to the people, engaging them and getting up close and personal with them. This is, after all, a band that once shared its long locks of hair and is not afraid to now show its wrinkles.

“We are not ready to retire,” said Bono, proudly, before breaking into I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For from The Joshua Tree album. Here the crowd joined in as well.

The set list included: You Are the Real Thing, The Fly, Mysterious Ways, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Where the Streets Have No Name and plenty more. But the biggest surprise of the night was a little love song called North Star, which, Bono said, has never been played before in North America. It is also being featured in the Transformers: Dark of the Moon film coming out soon. As all good songs, it will take time for it to grow on us. The crowd loved it, but not as much as old favorites.

With each song people of all ages grew more hypnotized. Those who had seemed shy earlier, with daylight, loosened up as soon as it got dark. They bounced from their seats and against one another while singing along and holding up their palms wide open. Nobody seemed to mind their personal space or if a boundary had been crossed. There were no boundaries.

It helped that the stage, a mechanic sea star-like creature nicknamed The Claw, felt like another member of the band. The steel creature, which cost $25 million, was meant to deliver an intimate atmosphere. It did the job, and so far it keeps gathering attention everywhere its tentacles spread.

On this particular night, it appeared to be feeding off from the energy given by South Florida fans. The roof colors changed with each song, alternating between green, purple, red, orange and blue. Two bridges extending to the lucky mass at ground level allowed for some special moments, such as when Bono and The Edge reached out to each other from different sides while singing Until the End of the World.

The sophisticated giant TV screen delivered unimaginable surprises, including a personalized greeting from NASA Commander Mark E. Kelly (“Hello, Miami”) that shocked everyone, and another from Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese political prisoner. The sound emanating from the machine’s speakers was at times too powerful and drowned lyrics here and there. Even so, people followed the band, track by track, making up whatever lyrics they could not recall.

With all the amazing technicalities and special effects, The Claw still was no match for the thousands of passionate fans, who gave the band everything they had: their screams, voices, arms in the air, applauses. They even lent their cellphones, holding them up open to simulate a night sky full of stars when Bono asked them to. This was while a motivating Walk On played and Amnesty volunteers came out holding candles until the stage was all surrounded by them.

In the end, it wasn’t so much the brilliantly and expensively conceived stage that gave that intimate feeling, but the being there in the moment, as part of a sea of people who wanted the same thing: to be part of U2, in some way. That’s why they sang along and stood for most of the show, and why they went along with the commentary.

“Irish people are like Latin people who don’t know how to dance,” said Bono, making the crowd laugh. “Actually, there is an exception. The Edge can dance.” He refused to give a demonstration, even though Bono practically begged him.

For this show, the singer wore a black leather jacket while The Edge wore his serious face and dark beanie. The rest of the band, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, were dressed in white. It was not always that way, as an old footage played later on in the show, from the band’s Joshua Tree days, reminded us. In it, Bono lacks the cool glasses and The Edge wears a long brown coat and black hat.

Aside from the nostalgic film, the night carried other highlights such as when rays of light shot up from the top of the stage brightening the night sky. Another was when Bono decided to swing off the stage holding on to a red glowing microphone as if he were a kid riding an old car tire.

By the end of the show I really wanted to believe Lisa Hayes, a native of Missouri whose parents are Irish and who has seen the band at least 10 times. At the beginning of the show she and others had explained to me that a U2 concert is really a religious experience and how people walk out feeling overwhelmed with a collective feeling of love and positive energy.

“You feel their music is about helping each other, not just stumping over people to get to where you need,” Hayes said.

Surely this show, along with Bono’s screams for freedom, peace and love, had transformed us all and turned us, automatically, into better individuals. But one look at the traffic exiting the parking lot proved the whole theory wrong and had me wishing that The Claw had never lifted off -- or at least, had swallowed us all.

SET LIST

Even Better Than the Real Thing

The Fly

Mysterious Ways

Until the End of the World

I Will Follow

Get On Your Boots

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

The Promised Land

North Star

Beautiful Day (with fragments of Space Oddity)

Elevation

Pride In The Name of Love

Miss Sarajevo

Zooropa

City of Blinding Lights

Vertigo

I'll Go Crazy

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Scarlet

Walk On

ENCORES

One

Will You Love Me Tomorrow

Where the Streets Have No Name

Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me

With or Without You

Moment of Surrender

Anyone who’s been to an arts camp or summer festival has heard that sound before – enthusiastic, friendly voices loudly acclaiming a performance by members of the team.

Tuesday night at Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Persson Hall, the applause from a home-court crowd was heard for two aggressive performances by faculty members at the summer Stringendo School for Strings, who played music by Brahms: his Piano Quartet No. 1 (in G minor, Op. 25), and the Piano Quintet (in F minor, Op. 34). And indeed these performances, featuring well-known local players as well as members of the Cleveland and Atlanta orchestras, were completely committed, engaged ones, in which the musicians could be seen attacking this seminal music with real passion.

But while there was much fine playing in both pieces, the evening was marred for me by an out-of-tune piano, with a noticeably flat C above middle C and what sounded like some shaky notes around it as well. The bad tuning threw off the intonation of the whole concert as the string players referenced a faulty model, the proof being in the soli sections without the keyboard, in which the strings could be heard in revised, balanced adjustment with themselves.

The G minor Piano Quartet, featuring the fine pianist Tao Lin along with violinist Jun-Ching Lin (of the Atlanta Symphony), violist Stanley Konopka (of the Cleveland Orchestra), and cellist Jonah Kim, began in sober style but very much out of tune, a problem underlined by the many unison octaves in Brahms’ writing. Amid the off-key proceedings could be heard some attractive playing, and by Kim in particular, who made the most of his solo passages such as the intensely emotional introduction of the second subject.

From the outset, the four players demonstrated a strong sense of ensemble, and they had a clear unity of interpretive vision. The Intermezzo second movement was more deliberate than light on its feet, and the trio had a markedly gentle quality as it opened. The Andante con moto third movement had the same kind of tense, big-boned reading as the other movements, and it proceeded inexorably and powerfully to the waltz-time march in the middle; it was here that his performance really began to cook.

The Gypsy finale (marked Presto) of this quartet is a proven crowd-pleaser, and this foursome took it at a swift but not blistering pace. All four did good work with the almost constant sixteenth notes that run through this movement, and pianist Lin did an expert job setting up the coda with murmurs that slowly built to the foot-stomping conclusion. The almost-full house at Persson Hall gave the players three long curtain calls.

The Quintet, which featured the two Lins and Konopka, with cellist Claudio Jaffe and Stringendo director Patrick Clifford on second violin, was similar to the Quartet in that it was large-minded and boldly colored. It’s a more cohesive piece than the Quartet (as fine a work as that is), but no less fiery, and the five players dove into it with intensity. So this was a first movement, leaving the tuning aside, that had sweep and majesty, especially in its main theme, aided by the group’s excellent ensemble.

The second movement’s mid-section had good duet work from Clifford and Konopka, and there was a kind of restless serenity about the playing as a whole, and a careful focus on the primary six-note motif that extends throughout. As with the Quartet, things really got moving in the third movement, easily the best-known of the four, with violinist Lin and Konopka setting up the military tattoo with memorable precision, and all five tearing into the big climactic tune with near-abandon.

The beginning of the finale is tough to bring off after that level of excitement, and it was a little unfocused here, but cellist Jaffe played the Haydnesque main theme with lovely tone and rhythmic sinew, moving the performance back onto the rails. Overall, intensity was the guiding principle, and again, the five musicians built powerfully to the ending, handling all of their very difficult, perpetual-motion parts with admirable skill.

It’s a testament to the seriousness and the strength with which this music was played that the out-of-whack piano was not as noticeable through both works as it could have been. But it still hurt the music, through no fault of the players. Before the final concert Tuesday, which includes the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata (which in A minor) and the Borodin Piano Quintet (which is in C minor), someone needs to tune that piano.

The Stringendo School for Strings faculty concert series ends Tuesday with violinist David Mastrangelo in the Sonata No. 2 for solo violin of Eugene Ysaye, and Mastrangelo and cellist Jonah Kim in the Passacaglia on a Theme by Handel of Johan Halvorsen. Joined by pianist Yueh-Yin Liao, Kim will play the Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, and Kim, Liao and Mastrangelo will be joined by violinist Belen Clifford and violist David Pedraza in the Piano Quintet of Alexander Borodin. The concert begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Persson Recital Hall. Tickets are $15. Call 803-2970 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Margarita Shevchenko’s program at the Steinway Gallery on Saturday night was as core-Romantic as it could get, with much-loved music by Brahms and Chopin making up the bill of fare.

But while these works were twice- and thrice-familiar, the Russian-born resident of North Miami Beach brought a deep, mature vision to the music that enhanced and restored its classic status. By that I don’t mean that she aped the renditions of pianists of bygone generations; simply that the interpretive weight she gave the pieces reminded us why we cherish them.

Shevchenko opened with the seven pieces of Johannes Brahms’s Fantasien (Op. 116), music written in 1892, at the end of the composer’s career. But there isn’t a lot of Brahms’ more familiar late manner in these pieces. There is, rather, plenty of youthful vigor here, and a slightly less cluttered keyboard texture that helps the ideas speak more clearly.

In other words, it’s music that’s tough to play and intensely serious, and in the three Capriccios (Nos. 1, 3 and 7), Shevchenko played with plenty of fire and muscle. In the contrasting section of the second Capriccio, she demonstrated one of her best qualities: Big, beautiful singing tone. That same attribute was evident in the Intermezzo (No. 4 in E) that followed, the most widely known piece of the set, primarily for its lovely main theme.

In the E minor Intermezzo (No. 5), Shevchenko pedaled through the rests, creating a very interesting, unusual texture in which the inner voices murmured and blurred in a stagnant, bitter atmosphere. She kept up the prophetic approach in the next Intermezzo (No. 6 in E), emphasizing its slippery chromaticism, then swept it away with a fierce reading of the final Capriccio (No. 7 in D minor), tearing into it with virtually no break from No. 6.

The music of Chopin took up the rest of the recital, all of it relatively late music as well, beginning with one of his finest works, the Polonaise-Fantaisie (Op. 61) of 1846. This is a most difficult piece to bring off because its episodic nature can make it sound choppy and incoherent. But Shevchenko is a musician who knows how to maintain a narrative line, so that the music had its mood-shifting fantasy element without losing sight of the polonaise hovering in the background.

One reason she was able to do this was the fresh color she brought to the various iterations of the main theme; the vividness of each new framework helped the listener hear it again, and retain it as it made its way through the rest of the piece. It would have been even better with a somewhat crisper sense of rhythm in the polonaise sections, but overall this was a beautiful traversal of this work. In addition, her closing pages, with their treacherous sliding chords and pounding octaves in the left hand, were admirably clear. Many are the pianists who will make a hash of the last couple pages, but not Shevchenko, who carried them off well.

The Barcarolle (in F-sharp, Op. 60), also from Chopin’s final period, benefited from Shevchenko’s tone production in particular, and her performance in general had the right feel of exuberant Romanticism, as a simple Italianate gondolier ballad blossoms immediately into a huge statement, rich with thirds and sixths. Although the Barcarolle is less complex than the Polonaise-Fantaisie, it has the same kind of nearly overwrought ending, which Shevchenko also handled just as ably, with a precisely drilled tumble to a low F-sharp at the every end.

The recital ended with the so-called Heroic Polonaise (in A-flat, Op. 53). Shevchenko’s interpretation was quite straightforward, and technically excellent, with good octaves in the E major cavalry charge in the middle. The second subject needed some more dynamic contrast and a shorter, bouncier rhythmic approach, as did the middle section, in which the theme was a little too soft and not crisp enough to make it stand out as well as it should have.

Still, in general this performance had all the force and swagger it needed to make a vigorous impression, and the smallish house at the gallery rose to its feet at its triumphant ending.

Shevchenko played more Chopin for the encore: the famous Grand Valse Brillante (in E-flat, Op. 18). Aside from the second strain, whose repeated notes were not all there the first time around, Shevchenko tossed this work off expertly, with a swift tempo and fine finger work, especially in the glittering figurations in the final pages.

After a concert of large-boned, thickly scored pieces, it was a pleasure to hear this more playful side of Shevchenko’s art, and like the rest of her efforts Saturday night, it had an adult polish to it that reflected the work of an artist who knows the music she’s presenting and knows exactly what she wants to say.

The Piano Lovers series continues Saturday, July 9, with a return appearance by the Venezuelan-born pianist Vanessa Perez. Her program will include works by Chopin and Mozart, as well as music by Spanish composers. The concert is set for 7 p.m. at the Boca Steinway Gallery. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Call 929-6633 or visit www.pianolovers.org.

Frederic Chopin created art amid exercise when he wrote his two collections of Etudes (Opp. 10 and 25, and not counting the three he wrote in 1839 for Fetis), and with the exception of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, they far outdistance every other such pedagogical work of their time.

Perhaps the monumentality of the challenge – like doing the complete 48 of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier – makes pianists shrink from playing them one after another, or perhaps some of them just aren’t congenial (Vladimir Horowitz, for instance, said he couldn’t do three of them, including the two in C). Whatever the reason, the young Russian-German pianist Sofiya Uryvayeva deserves credit for playing all of them back to back, as she did Saturday night at the Boca Steinway Gallery.

Uryvayeva, now resident in Miami, has appeared four other times in the gallery’s Piano Lovers series, including a recital in March. She has a YouTube channel with a wide variety of performances including music by Messiaen, Brahms and contemporary Polish composer Gerard Drozd as well as Chopin, and her concert this past weekend drew a full house.

She is an impressive player, one with a strong technique, a very pronounced singing tone, and the ability to persuasively inhabit different emotional moods. Most of the etudes came off successfully, but three or four of them fell short of the standard of the rest, and will need some more work before they can be brought out in public again.

Uryvayeva played Op. 10, then Op. 25, in order, and without an intermission. She began quite well, with a sparkling performance of the first etude (in C, Op. 10, No. 1), which wasn’t simply a parade of well-drilled arpeggios; at one cadence she played the notes with a drier, wittier color that added an engagingly light touch. But in the following A minor Etude, she seemed to lose her fingering footing, and while the well-known E major Etude that came afterward was pretty and effective, the following two still showed signs of trouble. Things almost broke down in the C-sharp minor Etude (No. 4), and the familiar Black Key Etude (in G-flat) was cautious and earthbound, in music that needs to glitter and float.

But those were her most difficult moments, and the concert improved steadily after that. No. 8 in F bubbled along serenely, as did No. 10 in A-flat, though it could have used some different colors at the key changes. Her Revolutionary Etude (in C minor, Op. 10, No. 12) was suitably fiery and tempestuous, and drew warm applause from the audience.

The Op. 25 set opened with a lovely reading of the A-flat Etude, and she brought a fine spirit of playfulness to No. 3 in F. The A minor Etude (Op. 25, No. 4), needed some more emphasis on the offbeat melodic line, to bring out the tension between it and the steady march in the left hand. The famous waltz in the middle of the E minor Etude (No. 5) was suave and inviting, and her double thirds in the No. 6 (in G-sharp minor) were admirably even, and quiet enough to stay out of the way of the melody below.

In the popular C-sharp minor Etude (No. 7), Uryvayeva chose a slow tempo that emphasized her ability to play with a beautiful tone, but the passionate runs in the left hand, particularly the big E-flat scale in the middle, were not as clean and accurate as they needed to be. No. 9 (In G-flat) again showed this pianist’s impish side to charming effect, and while her octaves and forcefulness in the No. 10 (in B minor) were impressive, she could have made more of the break between the opening and the tender middle section.

She opened the Winter Wind Etude (No. 11 in A minor) very deliberately, and she used it to set up both the A minor and the C minor Etude that followed it, playing the two with no pause between them. Both of these etudes had a high degree of polish, and her sweeping arpeggios in the C minor Etude had great sweep and bravura.

As an encore, Uryvayeva played the Mikhail Pletnev arrangement of the culminating pas de deux from Act II of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. This has the same sort of endless arpeggiation that some of the etudes do, which made it a fitting extra. Here, too, Uryvayeva’s ability to play singing melody was uppermost.

Sofiya Uryvayeva is a young (28), ambitious pianist, and she’s well worth hearing. She has substantial gifts, wide-ranging musical interests, and a work ethic that has her frequently concertizing in numerous halls hereabouts. It seems to me that in order to make the most of her talents, she needs now to woodshed it a little more on the trickier points of technique, and perhaps add some more repertoire that stresses the independence of the hands.

I’m thinking Bach, and while she does include some of his pieces on her website’s repertoire list, I for one would be happy to hear her again in a concert of preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier, or one or more of the suites, or perhaps a couple of the partitas. Bach, after all, was Chopin’s greatest influence aside from Mozart and Italian opera, and playing the music of the master from Eisenach is a wonderful way to deepen appreciation, and mastery, of Chopin’s aesthetic.

Next up in the Piano Lovers series is Margarita Shevchenko, Russian-born and trained in Moscow and Cleveland, and a member of the SoBe Institute of the Arts faculty in Miami Beach. Shevchenko will play three works by Chopin – the Barcarolle, the Polonaise in A-flat (Op. 53), and the Polonaise-Fantaisie – as well as the complete Op. 116 Fantaisies of Johannes Brahms. The concert this coming Saturday at the Boca Steinway Gallery begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 in advance, and $25 at the door. Call 929-6633 or visit www.pianolovers.org.