Four Arts season: New York, Beethoven, science top 2023-24 season events

There will be a New York and Beethoven kind of vibe at the Society of the Four Arts this coming season, and if that wasn’t enticing enough, the institution has added a new lecture series devoted to news of scientific breakthroughs in treating dementia.

Now in its 87th year, the society released details about much of its cultural programming on Aug. 29. Still to come is a list of its O’Keeffe Series speakers, but already culture enthusiasts can look forward to visits from rock muse Patti Boyd, Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb and writer Hernan Diaz, who co-won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction in May for his novel "Trust," about a New York financier who tries to capitalize on the 1929 stock market crash.

The Four Arts has a wide variety of programs at its Palm Beach campus — a former director described it as a liberal arts college in all but name — but its marquee art exhibits, concerts and speakers series draw the most attention from the general public.

Here’s a look at some of the society’s events for the 2023-24 season:

The first of three art exhibits opens Nov. 18 at the O’Keeffe Gallery with a selection of paintings, prints and drawings promised to the New-York Historical Society. The exhibit, "Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection," contains images of celebrated New York landmarks, parks and people by an illustrious list of artists including Marc Chagall, Andy Warhol, Childe Hassam, Jacob Lawrence and Theresa Bernstein. The show runs through Jan. 28.

A lecture about the exhibit by Wendy Nalani E. Ikemoto, senior curator of American art at the New-York Historical Society, is set for Jan. 19.

Opening Dec. 2 is "Flora Imaginaria: The Flower in Contemporary Photography," which consists of 71 photos celebrating “the beauty and biodiversity of flowers” as seen by 49 different artists including the Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar, who doubles as a photographer of floral still life. The exhibit will be installed in the Four Arts’ Philip Hulitar Sculpture Garden and be viewable for no charge. It will be on display until April 28.

A related lecture by William Ewing, curator of special projects at the Minneapolis-based Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography (FEP), is set for Jan. 31. Ewing curated "Flora Imaginaria" for the FEP.

The third exhibition takes viewers to New York’s Long Island, where the Guild Hall in East Hampton has been providing cultural offerings since 1931. "Guild Hall: An Adventure in the Arts," features 72 works from its collection, including pieces by major figures such as Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Chuck Close and Jane Freilicher. The show in the O’Keeffe Gallery opens Feb. 10 and is on view through April 2.

Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, gives a lecture about the exhibit Feb. 16.

Admission to the New York scenes and Guild Hall exhibits is $10, and reservations are required. Members of the society and children 14 and younger are admitted for free.

Across the hall from the O’Keeffe Gallery is the Gubelmann Auditorium, where concerts are regularly held on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Here are some highlights:

The coming year, 2024, is another Beethoven celebration year because it marks the 200th anniversary of the first performance of the epic Ninth Symphony, with its choral finale hymning the kinship of all mankind.

Mighty Ludwig gets the magnifying glass treatment this season at the hands of pianist Wu Han, the Four Arts artistic adviser, who also directs the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York with her husband, cellist David Finckel. She and Finckel team up Jan. 7 for the first of three Beethoven chamber music programs, this one featuring all five of the master’s cello sonatas.

On Jan. 10, violinist and violist Arnaud Sussmann, director of the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach, joins Wu Han and Finckel for two of Beethoven’s best-known piano trios, the early one in C minor (Op. 1, No. 3), and the later “Ghost” Trio (Op. 70), so-called for its mysterious second movement. Also on the program is a piano trio by Beethoven’s illustrious predecessor and one-time teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn (No. 28 in E, written in 1797).

The Beethoven mini-festival concludes Jan. 14 with three early works: the Clarinet Trio (Op. 11), the String Trio in D (Op. 9, No. 2), and the Septet (Op. 20), a work for winds and strings that was Beethoven’s most popular piece while he was alive. Guest artists include violinists Richard Lin and Aaron Boyd, cellist Jonathan Swenson, bassist Timothy Cobb, clarinetist Tomasso Lonquinch, bassoonist Marc Goldberg and hornist Hugo Valverde.

Three fine pianists will be on season programs this year, including Jeremy Denk (Jan. 24) in music by Bach, Chopin, Schubert, Clara Schumann and the contemporary American composer Missy Mazzoli. Pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown arrives March 13, with a wide-ranging program that includes two of his compositions along with music by Haydn, Ravel, Debussy and Mendelssohn, as well as pieces by the 19th-century German pianist and composer Delphine von Schauroth, whom Mendelssohn almost married.

Russia’s Anna Geniushene, who made a name for herself as a silver medalist at the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition, takes the stage April 24 for a recital made up entirely of the Op. 1 publications of seven composers: Clementi, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Berg and Weinberg.

No Four Arts season would be complete without a string quartet, and four of the world's leading foursomes are on the bill: the Calidore (Feb. 4), Schumann (Feb. 11), Escher (March 6) and Jerusalem (April 3) string quartets. Music by Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Ravel will be heard, and so will music by Janacek, Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten.

A wind quintet composed of players from Britain's Academy of St. Martin in the Fields comes to town Feb. 7 for music by Mozart, Glinka, Poulenc and Françaix, and on Feb. 9, four young opera singers from the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program — soprano Magdalena Kuzma, mezzo-soprano Elmina Hasan, tenor Matthew Cairns and baritone Eleomar Cuello — perform in recital the day after Gelb’s talk about opera’s future.

Bluegrass veteran Larry Stephenson returns with his band April 7 for the traditional Four Arts spring bluegrass concert, and on April 17 the classical crossover trio Time for Three brings its mix of string instrumentals and vocals to the Four Arts stage.

Opening the musical season will be two holiday-themed specials courtesy of Lincoln Center: Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra offer their “Big Band Holidays” concert with vocalist Ashley Pezzotti on Dec. 3, and on Dec. 6, the complete Brandenburg Concertos of J.S. Bach will be played by musicians from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Three dance performances, from Miami-based flamenco dancer Siudy Garrido and her company (Jan. 17), a troupe from West Palm Beach’s Fred Astaire Dance Studio (March 27), and the Las Republicas contemporary dance project led by Claudia Hilda (April 14) also are scheduled for the Gubelmann.

But the Four Arts is also distinguished by its bounty of other programs, including its Campus on the Lake adult education series and its curated Friday Film Series. There also are filmed screenings of recorded live productions from the Metropolitan Opera, this season including Daniel Catán’s "Florencia en el Amazonas" (Dec. 9) and Jake Heggie’s "Dead Man Walking" (April 27), and Britain’s National Theatre, featuring Emilia Clarke in Chekhov’s "The Seagull" (Dec. 2) and Giles Terera in Shakespeare’s "Othello" (March 10).

Some of the higher-profile appearances include the talk with Boyd, the British model (and ex-wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton) who has a memoir called "My Life in Pictures" (April 2), and the appearance by author Diaz (Dec. 13). Also, artist Mickalene Thomas appears in conversation with Isolde Brielmaier of New York’s New Museum (Dec. 4) and Florida photographer and conservationist Carlton Ward (Jan. 11) discusses his 2022 documentary "Path of the Panther," which chronicles the struggles of the Florida panther as it tries to survive in the Everglades.

New this season are three lectures presented by the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation in a program called the Tomorrow’s Breakthroughs Today Scientific Symposium Series. Researcher Miranda Orr (Jan. 17) of Wake Forest University talks about targeting “zombie cells” to treat dementia; Frank Lee, chairman of San Francisco’s Therini Bio (Feb. 28), discusses his company’s work developing a drug to treat brain inflammation as an Alzheimer’s therapy; and Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a dementia expert at the University of California, San Francisco (April 17), explains risk factors for dementia.

The three talks will be moderated by Dr. Howard Fillit, chief science officer of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, which was established by Ronald and Leonard Lauder.

Many more events are on the Four Arts schedule, which can be seen at fourarts.org. The box office can be reached at 561-655-7226.

This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: New York and Beethoven among Four Arts highlights for new season