This venerable chamber ensemble garners great guests. Morales, the superb Philadelphia Orchestra principal clarinetist, will join the regulars for the beloved Brahms Clarinet Quintet.

Shostakovich was, in the memorable words of his friend, the great cellist Mistislav Rostropovich, the soul of 20th-century Russia. What a burden; this was a cataclysmic era for a mighty nation. Yet the designation rings true. This is epochal, iconic art, to be heard in many other venues this season as well as this Curtis concert.

This is the second season for flutist Mimi Stillman's chamber music series, which brings together excellent local soloists. The opening concert, which she calls "Jet Whistle" (fasten your seatbelt), includes music of Haydn, Gaubert and Villa-Lobos, plus a new work by the fab Temple-based pianist Charles Abramovic, who will be at the keyboard.

Canadian conductor Peter Oundjian has a warm rapport with the band. Soprano Dawn Upshaw will be here as well, singing a local premiere of music by octogenarian French composer Henri Dutilleux.

The serene and elegant music of Victorian and Edwardian England has an intensely loyal, if specialized following. Karl Middleman and his band give us a healthy dollop of the stuff, along with some fellow travelers. Hip, hip hooray for the tunes of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Bridge, Dowland and Resphigi, as well as some salon and music hall songs.

Pianist and Network for New Music director Linda Reichart gets together with Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Gloria Justen for music by Bartok and Ligeti, as well as world premieres from Settlement boss Robert Capanna and something from Justen herself.

This pianist marches to his own inner drummer, but then so did the composer he here champions, Robert Schumann, whose music fills this program. They are a good match: Schumann is a cipher, exotically beautiful, but emotionally bewildering; and Sherman has the intellectual audacity — not to mention the fingers — to bring this astonishing music to life.

The journey from child prodigy to mature artist is incredibly treacherous, and many do not survive. Midori crossed her Rubicon by virtue of constant curiosity and a sense of a life in music that need not be fed by endless repetition of warhorse repertoire. She will play Beethoven and Bach, as well as the underheard violin sonatas of Debussy and Strauss, which she plays with remarkable aplomb. With Robert McDonald, piano.

This fine young foursome will team up with one of the supreme instrumentalists of our time. Uchida, who is possessed of an uncanny combination of precision and spontaneity, will anchor two masterpieces, the Piano Quintet of Schumann and the Piano Quartet of Mozart.

The themes are hardly new: love and loss, longing and fulfillment. Here's a contemporary take in song, via composers Bernard Rands (world premiere), John Harbison and Sebastian Currier. The soloist is the delightful mezzo-soprano Janice Felty.

Here are two enormous works that make their effect via an accumulation of gorgeous details. The great Berg Violin Concerto is serialism's pretty face, and Mahler's Symphony No. 4 is the sweet little summer cabin of a fearless castle builder, as intimate as a one-hour work for over a hundred musicians can get.

Serkin's idiosyncratic programs seem to announce that he is playing for himself. The audience may come along for the ride, if they so choose. So here we have the odd combination of ancient music from Bach and Des Prez, 20th-century classics of Schoenberg and Carter (a local premiere of Intermittences), and Beethoven. But not just any Beethoven — it is the gargantuan Hammerklavier sonata, which Serkin plays with an energy and wisdom like no one else.