Beyond the Big Concert Halls: Classical Music is Alive in Milwaukee this Fall

In addition to Milwaukee’s major institutions for symphonic, operatic and ballet music, there is also an outstanding depth of chamber and other classical music presented by world-class groups. Often, they are affiliated with institutes of higher education or with music conservatories and can be found with a simple online search, e.g.: chamber music Milwaukee. 

Here are brief previews for some concerts occurring in in the last quarter of 2025.  

Wisconsin Philharmonic 

“Prairie Voices” 

3 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 12 

Oconomowoc Arts Center, 641 E. Forest Street, Oconomowoc 

The orchestra is under the baton of music director Alexander Platt. The program includes the premier of Wisconsin composer William Neil’s Prairie Music, a musical tribute to the beauty of the American prairie. Howard Hanson’s “Romantic” Symphony (#2) will feature young musicians from Brookfield High Schools. It was commissioned in 1930 by Serge Koussevitzky for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Hanson (1896–1981) was an American composer and conductor who served as the director of the Eastman School of Music for 40 years. Also on the program is Schumann’s Cello Concerto. Composed in 1850, it is a romantic masterpiece with soaring melodies that will remain with you long after you leave the concert hall. Madison based cello star Alex Chambers-Ozasky will be the soloist.  

Additional information about the Wisconsin Philharmonic can be found on its website: https://www.wisphil.org/. For ticket information and directions please go to the Oconomowoc Arts Center site: oasd.k12.wi.us/artscenter/events

Sacra Nova Chorale 

“The Peaceable Kingdom”  

7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24 

Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, 3100 S. 41st St,  

4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 26 

Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, 812 N. Jackson Street

The Sacra Nova Chorale under the direction of John Bragle begins its 2025-26 season with works by Vivaldi’s Magnificat, RV 610; Mozart’s Alma Dei Creatoris, KV 277; Beethoven’s Elegischer Gesang, Op. 118; and Schubert’s Salve Regina, D. 386. Fast forward more than one hundred years and you’ll be delighted by the two selections from The Peaceable Kingdom (1936) by American composer Randall Thompson.  

The compositions by Vivaldi, Mozart and Schubert will be familiar to lovers of chorale music. Beethoven’s “Elegiac Song” was written for four voices and string quartet in 1814. It is unfortunately rarely performed, and this is a wonderful opportunity to hear it. In addition, you will hear premiers of Mark Kilstofte’s Through the Waters and Daniel Lynch’ O Love Divine, winners of Sacra Nova’s open competition where composers submit compositions following the general theme of the concert.  

The Chorale will be joined by organ, harpsichord, piano and the Elegant Music Services string quartet. Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto for Strings in A Major, RV 158 rounds out the program. Location and ticket information can be found at: sacranovachorale.com

Knightwind Ensemble 

Fall Concert  

3 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 26 

South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center, 901 15th Ave., South Milwaukee  

Founded in 1956, The Knightwind Ensemble now boasts more than 65 musicians. Knightwind presents a diverse musical repertoire from classic chamber pieces to contemporary full wind band compositions. Since 2010 they have been under the baton of music director Erik N. Janners who also serves as the director of music at Marquette University.  

The fall program features José Alberto Pina’s The Ghost Ship (2017), commissioned by the Gran Canaria Wind Orchestra. Pina is a contemporary Spanish composer and conductor specializing in symphonic bands. The composition is his musical response to the historic shipwreck of the American Star., disabled by a heavy storm while being towed. The ship “disappeared” for several days finally turning up on the beach of Garcey, Fuerteventura, an island in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Morocco. 

The oldest composition on the program is Percy Grainger’s Children’s March, scored by him for wind band from a piano composition he had written a few years earlier in 1919. Other compositions include Navarro’s Paconchita, Iannaccone’s Apparitions and Mogensen’s Aerial Fantasy. You will be treated to Julie Ann Giroux’s Fields of Gold, a lyrical history of Superman as he grew up in Kansas. Symphonic band music is international in scope as demonstrated by Norwegian composer Oyvind Moe’s Cerebral Vortex which is also on the program. 

For tickets and additional information about the Knightwind Ensemble visit knightwind.org.

Philomusica Quartet 

“Hope and Remembrance!”  

7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27 

Wisconsin Lutheran College Schwan Hall  

The Philomusica Quarter includes Jeanyi Yu and Sasha Mandl (violins), Nathan Hackett (viola) and guest cellist Peter Szczepanek. They open their 18th season using instruments from the Violins of Hope collection now in residence with the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra (MYSO). These are string instruments that survived the Holocaust and were restored by Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein. They are now used throughout the world and played so that their voices can heal, bringing hope and joy to others. Further information about the instruments can be found on violinsofhopewisconsin.org.

Philharmonia will peform:  

Victor Ullmann’s String Quartet No. 3, Op. 46. Ullmann was born in Silesia (Poland) in 1898 and grew up in Vienna where he studied with Arnold Schoenberg. He was deported to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in 1942 where this String Quartet was composed a year later. He was deported Auschwitz-Birkenau where he was gassed two days after he arrived. Before his final deportation he wrote: “All that I would stress is that Theresienstadt has helped, not hindered, me in my musical work, that we certainly did not sit down by the waters of Babylon and weep, and that our desire for culture was matched by our desire for life; and I am convinced that all those who have striven, in life and in art, to wrest form from resistant matter will bear me out.” 

Sholom Secunda’s String Quartet in C minor, which premiered on a 1947 radio broadcast of Arturo Toscanini's weekly Sunday program. Composed in a standard four-movement quartet arch, Secunda, who headed the Yiddish Theater in New York City, incorporates traditional Jewish liturgical and secular melodies.  

Feloix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 13. The magnificent work by a prodigious composer highlights longing, despair, joy and reflection. 

The Quartet is in residence at Wisconsin Lutheran College, and the concert is in the acoustically wonderful Schwan Hall on campus. Ticket information and directions to the auditorium can be found on the Wisconsin Lutheran College website: wlc.edu/Philomusica-String-Quartet

Milwaukee Musaik  

Resilience in Silence: Echoes of Memory and Survival  

(In partnership with Violins of Hope-Wisconsin) 

7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18 

Wauwatosa Presbyterian Church, 2366 N. 80th St.  

Milwaukee Musaik is a self-governing consortium of stellar classical musicians deeply committed to creating original, engaging concert experiences. Alexander Mandl, conductor, had this to say about their opening program of the 2025-26 season. “There are times when a concert is more than a totality of its tones and not just a simple performance. One of those times is when it becomes a remembrance and a reflection, as well as an education. The compositions on this program carry the ‘imprint of lives shaped by displacement, persecutions, and survival.’  

“Erwin Schulhoff perished in a Nazi concentration camp; György Ligeti narrowly survived World War II, losing most of his Jewish family to Nazis; Mieczyslaw Weinberg fled the Shoa (Holocaust) only to face terror in Stalin's USSR. Even American film composer John Williams' score to Schindler's List, though composed decades later, is a form of sonic memory; an elegy for a vanished world.”  

Written in 1925, Erwin Schulhoff: Concertino for Flute, Viola and Bass, WV 75, is a unique composition, at times eastern in character, at times pastoral. Schulhoff, born in Prague in 1894, makes us of Czech themes in the second movement. A folk song from western Ukraine is played by the flute in the Andante and more folk music can be heard in the lively finale. 

Composed in 1953, Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s From Musica Ricercata: Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet is a delightful collection of short pieces once “hidden” in his secret bottom drawer while Hungary was under Soviet rule.  

Concertmaster Jeanyi Kim is the solo violinist in John Williams: Three Pieces from “Schindler’s List. Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Chamber Symphony No. 4 for Clarinet, Triangle and String Orchestra, Op. 153 features grammy-winner Todd Levy on clarinet. Weinberg was a Holocaust survivor. This is the composer’s final work, and it ends with a stroke on the triangle. 

Further information about tickets and location can be found on Milwaukee Musaik’s website: milwaukeemusaik.org