The Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Chestnut Hill will present pianist James Palmer in recital Sunday, Nov. 16, at 5 p.m. A graduate of both Indiana University and Rice University, where he is a lecturer, Palmer will perform a program of music by Mozart, Liszt, Scriabin, and Verdi.

Palmer also has “local connections.” He attended both Norwood-Fontbonne Academy in Chestnut Hill and La Salle College High School in Wyndmoor when he lived in our neighborhood.

Commenting on the individual works that comprise his program, Palmer has explained, “I first learned Mozart’s Sonata K. 576 for my junior recital, almost 10 years ago now. A studio mate had played it the year before and I immediately fell in love with it. I continue to find this the most charming of all Mozart’s piano sonatas.”

Regarding Alexander Scriabin’s Sonata No. 5, Opus 53, Palmer said, “I am a self-professed [Alexander] Scriabin nerd. I am on the board of the Scriabin Society of America, I’ve put out a whole YouTube series on his Opus 11 Preludes, and last year I performed his Piano Concerto with an orchestra in Houston. His music has had a hold on me since I was a young pianist.”

When I was a student at the Peabody Conservatory of Music decades ago, Vladimir Horowitz was championing the piano sonatas and other shorter pieces of Scriabin as a complementary composer to his other Russian favorite, Sergei Rachmaninoff. Interestingly enough, I now have students at Settlement Music School who also find themselves attracted to Scriabin’s music – perhaps like a “moth to the flame?”

Referring to Franz Liszt’s “Venezia e Napoli,” Palmer said, “This is another piece that has been on my list for a long time, and it’s brand new to my repertoire. I knew that I wanted to play Liszt this year, something robust and exciting, but I wanted to choose something a bit off the beaten path. I was reminded of ‘Venezia e Napoli’ from a Liszt album by Lazar Berman that I own, and I quickly became certain that this was the right piece.”

Speaking of his own transcription of “O Don Fatale” from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, “Don Carlo,” Palmer concluded, “I am a lifelong opera buff. My late mother was a classically trained soprano, and her example deeply instilled a love for vocal music in me. I wrote this transcription (perhaps better called an arrangement) earlier this year as part of my doctoral dissertation, which was on transcriptions of vocal music for the piano.”

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Polar Opposites

The final weekend of October gave me the chance to take in two concerts with repertoires and performances drawn from the polar opposite ends of the instrumental universe. On Oct. 24, I heard the baroque period instruments ensemble, Filament, perform a program entitled “Bach Revisited” that offered different arrangements of the master’s trio sonatas. The following Sunday, I heard music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin lead the Philadelphia Orchestra in a program of romantic and modern masterpieces.

Nézet-Séguin’s program, heard in a virtually packed Marian Anderson Hall, brought back Jennifer Higdon’s “Concerto for Orchestra,” commissioned to celebrate the Orchestra’s own centennial in 2000-2001. It was premiered in 2002. It remains a tantalizing “potpourri” of all the possible textures and timbers found within the choirs of a full symphony orchestra, organized into a convincing narrative of five movements that neither slacken in this connected tension nor short-change a single color.

It’s the kind of score Nézet-Séguin revels in conducting, overseeing a vast army of players at his beck and call. The same can be said of Tchaikovsky’s “Francesca da Rimini.” It may not be the Russian’s most profound score, but it’s a lot of fun in the manner of a movie that’s so bad it’s good.

There’s nothing but good about Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D minor. To my ears, there’s nothing but “great” about it. Soloist Lisa Batiashvili gave it a stunning reading.

Filament played its all-Bach program in the chapel of the Fleisher Art Memorial in Queen Village. Violinist Evan Few, gamba players Elena Kauffman and harpsichordist John Walthausen gave stylish interpretations to Trio Sonatas in C major, D minor and E minor, Sonata for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord in G major, and Trio Over “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland.

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