A selective guide to the 2013-14 season

The best way to get a preview of the new music season is to put yourself on the mailing list for all of Philadelphia's music organizations in the city. No applicants are refused.

But in case you don't receive all those bright, beautiful brochures, here's a rundown on the events that arouse extra anticipation in this particular reviewer, with the usual disclaimer that they're a very limited sample of the wealth the Philadelphia music season offers, selected by someone with a highly personal, somewhat eccentric taste.

Two weeks ago I noted that the Philadelphia Orchestra is opening its new season with a welcome roar. (Click here.) The rest of the season maintains the promise of the first weeks, with programs that include Beethoven's Eroica, paired with Shostakovich's first cello concerto (Feb. 20-23); Faure's Requiem (March 13-14); another Beethoven-Shostakovich event (March 6-8); and the season grand finale, a concert version of Strauss's Salome that's also the first collaboration between the Orchestra and Opera Philadelphia. www.philorch.org.

When commentators discuss the Orchestra's financial problems, they overlook an important factor: Classical music aficionados today enjoy choices they didn't have when America's major orchestras were organized more than a century ago. Both the early music movement and the burgeoning new music scene have flourished in the last 30 years. The big increase in chamber music offerings also exerts a hefty pull on the pocketbooks of the Orchestra's core audience.

Rare chamber opportunities

Chamber music is a particularly important challenge in Philadelphia, which hosts one of America's largest and most active chamber music organizations. This season the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society will present over 60 programs featuring most of the world's leading chamber ensembles as well as many local lights.

My personal top choices from that mammoth schedule include a program devoted to arias from Bach's cantatas (Nov. 19); the Jupiter and Jasper Quartets presenting a rare opportunity to hear three string octets in one program (Jan. 15); Portuguese lute player Miguel Yisrael playing French lute music from the court of Versailles (March 7); and Ignat Solzhenitsyn playing the three highly emotional piano sonatas that Prokofiev wrote in response to the devastation of World War II (March 20). www.pcmsconcerts.org.

Rorem's birthday bash

Curtis Institute will celebrate the master song composer Ned Rorem's 90th birthday with a complete performance of the work he considers his magnum opus in the song genre: Evidence of Things Not Seen. Celebrants at Field Concert Hall will be treated to an 86-minute work for four voices and piano that sets 36 texts by poets and writers as varied as W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rudyard Kipling and William Penn (Oct. 23). www.curtis.edu.

Across the Channel

Piffaro, Philadelphia's globe trotting Renaissance wind band, has chosen an inspired theme for the four concerts it will present this season. Piffaro's musicians could have built an entire season around the endlessly appealing music produced under England's music-loving Tudor monarchs. Instead, they've added the spice of variety and historical significance by mixing in works by the Tudors' French rivals and trading partners on the other side of the English Channel. www.piffaro.org.

Natalie Zhu sightings

As I've been saying for the past two years, you can't go wrong if you pick a chamber concert featuring the pianist Natalie Zhu. Her local schedule for this year includes a Curtis alumni recital (Nov. 22); a Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital with Philadelphia Orchestra violinists David Kim and Juliette Kang (Jan. 13); an appearance with the Curtis Orchestra in Bartok's' Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting, (Jan. 26,) and her annual date with the 1807 and Friends chamber series (May 5, www.1807friends.org).

The Krantz dimension

Chamber concerts that feature the classical guitar add charm and elegance to everyone's musical explorations. Philadelphians can enjoy such events every season thanks to our local guitar virtuoso, Allen Krantz, who guests regularly with most Philadelphia chamber groups. This season he'll be join 1807 & Friends on April 7 and Dolce Suono October 2 and April 27. www.allenkrantz.com.

Two unpredictable gems

These two adventurous, unpredictable organizations consistently produce scintillating programs, even when they start with a premise that doesn't look promising.

Lyric Fest's song concerts this year include a musical biography of Benjamin Britten (Nov. 24); a Valentine program exploring the "daydreams, denials and disasters of love" Feb. 15); and a finale devoted to musical settings of poems by American women poets, with a group of specially commissioned premieres (March 28). www.lyricfest.org.

Mimi Stillman's Dolce Suono Ensemble will open the season with a program featuring music for flute, bassoon, oboe and piano (Oct. 27) and follow it with programs devoted to Russian music old and new (Dec. 15); songs of "love, jealousy, and desire" (April 27); and music by Spanish and Latin American composers (May 31). www.dolcesuono.com.

You can sample Dolce Suono's wares free at two 5 p.m. concerts scheduled for the Arthur Ross Gallery on the Penn campus (Oct. 2, Feb. 12).

And don't overlook....

I haven't even mentioned the Network for New Music's season-long focus on song, Orchestra 2001's tribute to Martin Luther King, Tempesta di Mare's multi-concert exploration of French court music.... but we've reached the limits of the most reliable estimates of Web attention spans. On the whole, boredom is not a Philadelphia problem.