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Hot tickets: St. Olaf College choir to perform

The choir of St. Olaf College, the quintessential Lutheran liberal arts school, in Northfield, Minn., has a long history of excellence. Founded in 1912, the choir has performed on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion, and sales of its 1999 recording, Great Hymns of Faith, have reached 240,000. Anton Armstrong, above, conductor since 1990, brings the 75 singers to St. Petersburg's First Presbyterian Church. On the agenda are standard works by Byrd, Bach and Lassus, as well as Robert Ray's Gospel Mass. The concert is at 3 p.m. Saturday. $15, $20 at the door. Limited seats available. (727) 822-2031.

Cellist gives composer his due

Cellist Lowell Adams, above, is doing his bit to resurrect the music of Ernst von Dohnanyi, the most important composer with Florida ties. Adams is the soloist in Dohnanyi's Concert Piece during Florida Orchestra Coffee programs today and Friday.

Born in Hungary in 1877, Dohnanyi immigrated to the United States after World War II and taught at Florida State University from 1949 until his death in 1960. For many years, he was dogged by allegations that he had been a Nazi sympathizer, and performances of his music were few and far between. Recent scholarship has proved those charges to be baseless.

Dohnanyi also fell out of favor because of his artistic conservatism. His music is unabashedly lyrical, in contrast to the folk-based works of his Hungarian contemporaries Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly. Today, a Dohnanyi renaissance is under way, with musicians discovering outstanding works such as his orchestral masterpiece, the Suite in F-sharp, and the knuckle-busting Six Concert Etudes for piano.

The orchestra also plays Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Tobias Picker's Old and Lost Rivers and excerpts from Tchaikovsky's ballet Sleeping Beauty, Ari Pelto conducting. Concerts are at 11 a.m. today at Mahaffey Theater, 400 First St. S, St. Petersburg, and 11 a.m. Friday at Ferguson Hall of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N W.C. MacInnes Place, Tampa. $17-$28. (813) 286-2403 or toll-free 1-800-662-7286.

The Brazilian Guitar Quartet - clockwise from top left, Everton Gloeden, Tadeu do Amaral, Nicolas de Souza Barros and Paulo Porto Alegre - will naturally play music of Villa-Lobos, Brazil's greatest composer and a master of the guitar, in Tarpon Springs. BGQ also has works of Albeniz and Bach, along with contemporary music of Edino Krieger, Camargo Guarnieri and Francisco Mignone on its program. The foursome plays at 8 p.m. Friday at Tarpon Springs Performing Arts Center, 324 E Pine St. $13, $15. (727) 942-5605.