Also Playing

The Curtis Institute of Music's student recitals - on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays - start up again Oct. 12. Catch great talent before the rest of the world does. (215-893-5261 or www.curtis.edu.)

   - P.D.

Mendelssohn Club's world premiere of David Lang's Battle Hymns was a hit during summer's Hidden City Festival, but this Oct. 17 reprise will afford a deeper look at this highly original music. The all-American program also has excerpts of Roberto Sierra's Missa Latina, to be premiered in full next year. (215-735-9922 or www.mcchorus.org.)    - D.P.S.
The Berlin Philharmonic puts itself online this season - live and archived. That's 33 concerts with Simon Rattle, plus guest conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink, Christoph von Dohnányi, David Robertson, and Seiji Ozawa. At $15 apiece, you can find out what's going on in another musical capital. Details at www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/dch.

   - P.D.
Emma Kirkby The closest the increasingly legendary British soprano comes to Philadelphia in her fall tour is Bethlehem, for a recital of Purcell and Dowland with lutenist Jakob Lindberg Oct. 31 (in a gala recital for Bach Choir of Bethlehem). Now 60, Kirkby is hardly the same singer of 30 years ago; the voice is darker, word coloring is richer. Who knows when or if she'll be back. (610-866-4382 or www.bach.org.)

   - D.P.S.
The Philadelphia Orchestra has retooled its adult Halloween concert for children - this year at 11:30 a.m. Oct. 31 with a suite from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Rossen Milanov conducts. (215-893-1999, www.philorch.org.)
   - P.D.
Network for New Music reprises the wonderful newish Bernard Rands work, "now again" - fragments from Sappho with mezzo Janice Felty Nov. 1. Seemingly, it's unofficial Sappho Month in new-music circles: EsaPekka Salonen's Five Images After Sappho will be played by Orchestra 2001 Nov. 14 and 15. (215-848-7647 or www.networkfornewmusic.org.)    - D.P.S.
The Pavel Haas Quartet - presented Nov. 15 by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society - is a recent international presence that plays with the kind of commitment you'd expect from a group named after a superb Czech composer who died at Auschwitz. The group performs Beethoven's Quartet in F major (Op. 59, No. 1) and Shostakovich's Quartet in A-flat major (Op. 118). (215-569-8080 or www.pcmsconcerts.org.)    - D.P.S.

Christoph Eschenbach returns to his first love, the keyboard, in a Nov. 22 Curtis Institute chamber music concert, joining Philadelphia Orchestra first associate concertmaster Juliette Kang and cellist Thomas Kraines in Mozart and Schubert. (215-893-7902, www.curtis.edu.)

   - P.D.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, perhaps at the front of the pack as a potential next music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, returns for his second visit Dec. 2, 4 and 5. (215-893-1999, www.philorch.org.)
   - P.D.
Anonymous Four has reduced touring, so every year that brings a holiday appearance of the a cappella group seems like a gift, which is why we'll be in the pews at St. Mark's Church with serene expectancy on Dec. 18. (215-569-8080, www.pcmsconcerts.org.)    - P.D.