Shriver Hall Concert Series

SHRIVER HALL CONCERT SERIES ANNOUNCES 60TH ANNIVERSARY AND 2025-26 SEASON

Shriver Hall Concert Series — Baltimore’s premier presenter of chamber music ensembles and solo recitalists — today announces its 60th anniversary and 2025-26 concert season. For six decades, SHCS has created unforgettable musical experiences in the intimacy of Shriver Hall. The upcoming season builds on this legacy with a vibrant lineup of programs featuring enduring masterworks and fresh perspectives, from Bach to Beethoven to Billy Childs.

Woven through the season are themes of another milestone: the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026. Featuring American composers past and present, texts from the nation’s greatest poets, classical works infused with bluegrass and jazz, and some of today’s most thrilling young performers, these concerts will celebrate a nation brimming with musical treasures and talent.

The Subscription Series features performances at Shriver Hall by: Sphinx Virtuosi and cellist Sterling Elliott, violinist Tessa Lark, cellist Joshua Roman, and double bassist Edgar Meyer, violinist Christian Tetzlaff, pianist Emanuel Ax, pianist Angela Hewitt, Isidore String Quartet and pianist Jeremy Denk, soprano Golda Schultz and pianist Jonathan Ware, and cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih.

SHCS’s free Discovery Series, which spotlights emerging artists on the classical music scene, includes recitals by: Abeo String Quartet, the winner of the 2025 Yale Gordon Competition (to be announced), and pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason.

Catherine Cochran, Executive Director, remarks, “Shriver Hall Concert Series is proud to have served Baltimore and the mid-Atlantic region for 60 years by presenting the world’s greatest artists, commissioning new works, championing young performers, providing opportunities for students, and building community. We’re excited to celebrate this milestone in 2025-26 with a season of acclaimed, thoughtful artists from around the world in programs that highlight the range of classical music as well as the rich diversity of American music as the country marks its own 250th anniversary. We invite audiences to join us for another terrific year of musical adventure.”

SHCS’s 60th anniversary season opens on Sunday, October 19, 2025 with the pioneering Sphinx Virtuosi, an 18-member self-conducted string orchestra and flagship ensemble of the Sphinx Organization. With “immeasurable power, unwavering command, and soulful beauty” (Washington Post), these masterful players make their Baltimore debut with a program devoted to peace and the resilience of the human spirit. Acclaimed young cellist Sterling Elliott, who makes his SHCS Subscription Series debut after last appearing on the Discovery Series in 2023, joins as the soloist for American composer William Grant Still’s Suite, inspired by Harlem Renaissance sculptures.

On Sunday, November 16, 2025, SHCS presents the powerful trio made up of violinist Tessa Lark, cellist Joshua Roman, and double bassist Edgar Meyer. Described by The New Yorker as “the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively unchronicled history of his instrument,” seven-time Grammy winner Edgar Meyer is the only bassist to receive both the Avery Fisher Prize and a MacArthur Genius Award. Meyer’s new all-star American trio blends bluegrass roots with classical virtuosity in a program of Bach, two early Meyer trios, and a new work Meyer composed expressly for this dynamic ensemble.

Violinist Christian Tetzlaff performs a program of Bach on Sunday, December 7, 2025. Described as one of the world’s most acclaimed violinists, Christian Tetzlaff brings his “incisive brilliance and fierce elegance” (Chicago Tribune) to some of the most profound music ever written. The German virtuoso performs four of Bach’s revelatory works for solo violin, including the beloved Chaconne from Partita No. 2 – repertoire he has spent a lifetime exploring, recording, and performing in interpretations that “match Bach’s 18th-century ingenuity with passion and warmth in the here and now” (The New York Times). Tetzlaff has previously appeared at Shriver Hall three times: in recital with pianist Lars Vogt (2011), with the Tetzlaff Quartet (2017), and with the Tetzlaff-Tetzlaff-Dörken piano trio (2023).

First performing at Shriver Hall in 1979, SHCS is pleased to welcome pianist Emanuel Ax back for the fourth time on Sunday, January 11, 2026. The consummate pianist Emanuel Ax brings a lifetime of authority to every musical setting – whether as a soloist with the world’s leading orchestras, chamber musician, Grammy-winning recording artist, or recitalist. With “bountiful imagination, delicacy when called for and thundering power” (The New York Times) he returns to Shriver Hall with a program of essential repertoire including Schubert's powerful Sonata in A minor and a dazzling array of Chopin.

On Sunday, February 22, 2026, world-renowned pianist Angela Hewitt returns to Shriver Hall for a fifth appearance after most recently launching SHCS’s 2023-24 season; she made her series debut in 2006. Globally lauded for her Baroque artistry, Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt won the prestigious City of Leipzig Bach Medal in 2020 and The Daily Telegraph has praised her “crispness and clarity” and “exquisite precision.” Her mastery shines in a program of Baroque brilliance: two adventurous Bach works, the fiery virtuosity of Scarlatti, and Rameau’s elegant Suite No. 2 – her Hyperion recording of which The Times hailed as “magnificent.”

The Isidore String Quartet, who made its Baltimore Debut on SHCS’s Discovery Series in 2024, is joined by pianist Jeremy Denk to perform the Baltimore premiere of Billy Childs’s new String Quartet, co-commissioned by SHCS on Sunday, March 8, 2026. With their “polished sonority and well-balanced, tightly synchronized ensemble” (Chicago Classical Review), the young Isidore Quartet has swiftly soared to prominence, winning the 2022 Banff Competition and a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant. Now, they present a new work written for them by foremost American composer and Grammy-winning jazz pianist Billy Childs. Jeremy Denk, “a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs,” (The New York Times) joins them for Schumann’s expansive Piano Quintet. Denk was last seen at Shriver Hall in recital opening the 2017-18 season.

Making their Baltimore debuts, soprano Golda Schultz and pianist Jonathan Ware give a recital featuring Strauss's Four Last Songs, plus works by Florence Price, Johannes Brahms, and others on Sunday, March 22, 2026. An enticing selection of art songs spans familiar and overlooked repertoire from myriad styles, all rooted in great literature with settings of Walt Whitman, Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, and Strauss’s opulent Four Last Songs with texts by Hermann Hesse. South African soprano Golda Schultz, who has starred at the Opéra National de Paris, Metropolitan Opera, and BBC Proms, brings this program to life with her “remarkable depth and dimension” and “distinctively thrilling radiance” (Financial Times).

Cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih, last seen by Shriver audiences in 2022, return to Shriver Hall to conclude the 60th anniversary season on Sunday, April 26, 2026. Known as an internationally renowned British cellist, Steven Isserlis CBE – who joined SHCS for the first time in 1986 and will now return for a sixth engagement at Shriver Hall – is praised for leaving listeners “in perpetual wonder at the ingredients in his art” (The Australian) and will perform a program suited to his brilliance and versatility. From the playful charm and innovation of Beethoven to Soviet composer Kabalevsky’s personal emotion to Czech trailblazer Kaprálová’s explosiveness, Isserlis embarks on a captivating journey for all who cherish cello and piano.

Shriver Hall Concert Series’ free Discovery Series kicks off with the Baltimore debut of the Abeo String Quartet on Saturday, November 8, 2025. Formed at Juilliard, the Abeo Quartet was the inaugural Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the University of Delaware (2021-23). Its accolades already include prizes at the Fischoff, Melbourne, and Yellow Springs competitions and performances at the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center. The Quartet channels its energies into the dramatic first quartets of Mendelssohn and Brahms and the distinctive voice of American composer Adolphus Hailstork.

Continuing the Discovery Series will be the winner of the 2025 Yale Gordon Concerto Competition on Saturday, January 31, 2026. The leading classical musicians of tomorrow are training at the Peabody Institute today. The extraordinary young artist who wins the conservatory’s Yale Gordon Concerto Competition this year will preview classical music’s bright future in an intimate recital at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Closing out the free Discovery Series is the Baltimore debut of pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason on Saturday, February 14, 2026. Twenty-one-year-old standout pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason – the third virtuoso of the Kanneh-Mason clan – has captivated audiences at the BBC Proms, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and London’s Wigmore Hall, performing “straight from the heart, with care, sparkle, and self-possession” (BBC Music Magazine). Her wide-ranging recital program reflects her curiosity, featuring works by composers showcased on her debut solo album, Fantasie (March 2025), for Sony Classical.