The Fine Arts Quartet finished their spring season in fine form last Sunday, proving that well-known works can sound fresh and exciting when performed by master musicians. Violinists Ralph Evans & Efim Boico, violist Yuri Gandelsman and cellist Wolfgang Laufer were joined by pianist Gisele Witkowski in the Quintet in E Flat by Robert Schumann, a staple of the chamber music repertoire. This performance showed the Fine Arts at their best, with a rich sound and effortless musicality. Witkowski proved a fully expressive yet sensitive partner to the quartet, the two forces equal in technique and temperament.

This weekend, concertgoers will get a peek into the future with a performance by conductor Edo de Waart, music director designate of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The concert’s first half consists of a work called In Praise of Music by Pennsylvania native Dominick Argento (b. 1927). Typical of many 20th-century composers, his style reflects many influences—tonality, atonality, 12-tone method—but never became “avant-garde,” unlike several of his postwar contemporaries.

Karole Armitage will bring her Armitage Gone! Dance Company to Alverno College for an evening of performance that will include Ligeti Essays and Time Is the Echo of an Axe Within a Wood, two works created by the estimable choreographer for inclusion in a current spring tour. Formerly referred to as the “Punk Ballerina,” Armitage has been a notable personality in the dance world since her first choreographed piece in 1978. She has found success not only in ballet and interpretive dance realms

Classical music is as much about acoustics and a sympathetic atmosphere as it is about literature and performance. I recently attended a Vienna Philharmonic concert in the famous Musikverein, a marvel of a Viennese concert hall. The warmth and intimacy of that great space leaves most modern halls, such as our Uihlein Hall, feeling vast and cold. What would our very good Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra—and its anonymous and coughing audience in the spacious dark—become in a better space? The sudden burst of spring weather matched the theme of the MSO concert last weekend. Andreas Delfs led Beethoven Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”), which began with restraint in its first movement, certainly pastoral in spirit

The Milwaukee Ballet will ring in April with a mixed repertory program as part of its annual “Milwaukee Ballet at the Pabst” series. Consisting of three movements from a trio of young, vibrant, talented choreographers, each section of the 90minute program will feature a different thematic purpose with each commissioned to showcase his or her unique vision. After capturing first prize at the 2nd Genesis International Choreographic Competition held by Milwaukee Ballet in 2007, French-born choreographer Nelly van Bommel has been asked to create another work for the company. “The piece is loosely based on the history of nomadic people or what people more commonly refer to as Gypsies . . .

Composers do not live in a vacuum and thus cannot help but be influenced to some degree by their surroundings and even by the works of other composers. Indeed, some composers have deliberately sought out their cohorts to refresh their thinking or find a new approach. New York-born composer John Corigliano’s (b. 1938) music emphasizes musical architecture, color and dramatic effects, and though steeped in the post-Romantic aesthetic nevertheless shows the influence of the Minimalist and Serialist schools as well. The next Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert opens with Corigliano’s Fantasia on an Ostinato (1986), a work he based on the Allegretto of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 (1811).

Among the composers most well known to classical music lovers are probably not Ferdinando Carulli (1770-1841) or Fernando Sor (1778-1839). The guitar has (as far as Classical Music is concerned) always been something of the ugly stepsister amongst the instruments.

Shameless Commerce” was an appropriate title for the annual Early Music Now concert featuring a fundraising auction at intermission. 16th and 17th century vendors’ tunes from London and the English countryside, selling everything from chimney sweeping to oysters, comprised the concert by the ensemble Hesperus at the UW- Milwaukee Zelazo . . .

Present Music collaborated with Milwaukee Dance Theatre in performances last Thursday through Sunday at the Off-Broadway Theatre, featuring a streamlined production of Antigone. Rather than an adaptation of the Sophocles tragedy, this was a new version with a script by Milwaukee Dance Theatre artistic directors Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson, and incidental music by Eric Segnitz, Greek tragedy is notoriously tricky stuff. Contemporary audiences are not as educated in Greek myth as were educated classes of previous eras. But beyond that, staring back into legendary times and finding relevant ways of presenting the profound universal truths of these dramas is downright intimidating.

After reading through the score of a brand-new work by a friend and fellow composer, the semiretired Johannes Brahms remarked: “Why on Earth didn’t I know that one could write a cello concerto like this? Had I known, I would have written one long ago.” High praise, indeed, from a man notoriously parsimonious with praise for his contemporary composers.