Despite the disappearance of the Concert Association of Florida, which gave up the ghost in February after 42 years, the upcoming classical-music season has much to recommend it, including the return to local concert-hall stages of James Judd, former director of the Florida Philharmonic.

Judd will lead the Master Chorale of South Florida and the Boca Raton Symphonia in three performances of Handel's Messiah, the first on Dec. 4 at Miami's Trinity Cathedral. Seraphic Fire concert choir presents the same holiday favorite Dec. 19 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

POWERFUL PIECES

But most impressive is the season's complement of well-known big pieces: from the Beethoven Ninth Symphony and two of Bach's Brandenburg concerti and two major contemporary pieces such as the violin concerti of John Adams and Britain's Thomas Adés.

Expect a decent helping of star power, too, from the legendary New Zealand soprano Kiri Te Kanawa (March 9) to matinee violin idols Joshua Bell (Feb. 15) and German crossover sensation David Garrett (Oct. 8-9), all at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts. And there couldn't be a classical season in South Florida without violinist Itzhak Perlman, who appears in recital Jan. 12 at the Arsht.

Two of the hottest young pianists working today also will be here: Lang Lang plays the Prokofiev Third Concerto on March 29 at the Arsht with Christoph Eschenbach and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra; in April at the Lincoln Theatre, Yuja Wang can be heard with Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony in the bracing Bartok Second Concerto.

Not to be overlooked is Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter, who will join the Cleveland Orchestra on March 26-27 for the Chopin Second Concerto during the big Ohio band's annual three-program residency at Knight Concert Hall. Violinists also are well-represented: Leila Josefowicz performs the Adés concerto with the Cleveland on Jan. 22-23, while Jennifer Koh joins Ludovic Morlot and the New World from Feb. 5-7 for another recent piece, the Adams Violin Concerto. Later that month, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg plays the beautiful Barber Violin Concerto with the same orchestra under the baton of the Atlanta Symphony's Robert Spano.

And then there are the really big performances, with Tilson Thomas at the center of two of them: the Mahler Fifth Symphony, set for April 10-11 on a program with the rarely heard Piano Concerto of Aaron Copland, played by the fine Jeremy Denk. And on Oct. 24-25, Tilson Thomas leads the Master Chorale and the New World in the Beethoven Ninth with soloists including the esteemed soprano Christine Brewer. The chorale also tackles the Mozart Requiem on April 16-18 with its director, Joshua Habermann.

Other visiting orchestras will add more heft. At the Broward Center, the Houston Symphony and director Hans Graf go multimedia with a Jan. 31 performance of Gustav Holst's The Planets, accompanied by high-definition images from NASA. Other guest ensembles include the Israel Philharmonic under Pinchas Zukerman (Dec. 16) and Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony (Feb. 14) at the Arsht Center, plus JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic at Parker Playhouse on March 12. And on Jan. 29-30, the Cleveland and director Franz Welser-Most perform symphonies by Beethoven (No. 3, Eroica) and Bernstein (No. 2, The Age of Anxiety, with Miami's Joela Jones as pianist).

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