Chestnut Hill’s Dr. Donald Meineke will conduct the opening concert of the 2025-26 season of Choral Arts Philadelphia. He is also the group’s artistic director. The program, dubbed “From This Time Forth: Music of Comfort and Hope,” includes performances of two classic settings of the liturgy of the Requiem Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, plus a modern reflection on the end of life.

The concert’s centerpiece will be the performance of the 1605 “Requiem Mass: Officium defunctorum” by Tomás Luis de Victoria, the greatest of the Spanish composers of late 16th-century High Renaissance. Victoria occupies the same historical place as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The latter was the Roman maestro whose mid-16th century efforts on the Council of Trent (often referred to as the Catholic Counter-Reformation) convinced prelates meeting in Trent to combat the Protestant Reformation, and that beautiful choral music could sit comfortably within the Council’s reformed liturgy.

The second “Requiem” on the program will be Herbert Howells’ 1932 free setting of the liturgy. Howells remains one of the treasures of the “Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement” that began in the middle of the 19th century. Its aim was to restore much of the liturgical splendor that characterized the pre-Reformation Church in England. The movement inspired a virtual renaissance of English sacred choral music.

Meineke is a living part of that ongoing tradition within all the national provinces of the 85-million member worldwide Anglican Communion. As director of music for St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, he oversees a musical program that includes a professional standard choir singing a full polyphonic setting of either the Latin Ordinary of the Mass or an English Communion Service every Sunday morning at the 11 a.m. Choral High Mass. The musical portion of the service is filled out by motets, anthems, psalms, and chants.

The concert’s final work will be Robert Lucas Pearsall’s “Lay a Garland.”

“From This Time Forth,” Saturday, Oct. 4, 4 p.m., at the Church of the Holy Trinity Rittenhouse, 1904 Walnut St. Tickets are $17 for students, $42 general admission and $52 for premium seating. For more information, visit choralartsphila.org.

Chamber Ensemble on ‘The Hill’

The Philadelphia Chamber Ensemble opened its 2025-26 season with a pair of recitals that included its move to Chestnut Hill for its Friday evening performances. Paired with its traditional Sunday afternoon date in Old Pine Street Presbyterian Church at Fourth and Pine Streets in Society Hill, the Ensemble now includes an engagement in the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, 8855 Germantown Ave.

Music director and cellist John Koen was pleased with the size of the audience for the Ensemble’s initial foray into the neighborhood. That crowd of classical music lovers heard excellent renditions of work by Bohuslav Martinu, Ludwig van Beethoven, Ellen Taaffe Zwillich and Bedrich Smetana.

I found the interpretation of Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 in E minor (“From My Life”) to be the program’s most convincing. Violinists Jennifer Haas and William Polk, violist Kerri Ryan, and Koen gave its four movements a performance that coursed with the rhythmic energy and harmonic tartness of the score’s folk music roots, but also glistened with the intimate classicism only a string quartet can proffer.

Martinu’s Madrigals for Violin and Viola received an edgy reading. Flutist Patrick Williams added surprisingly puckish sparkle to Beethoven’s Serenade in D major for Flute, Violin and Viola, Opus 25, and Taaffe’s Quartet for Oboe (Richard Woodhams), Violin, Viola and Cello was unexpectedly (at least by me!) beguiling.

A sentimental passing

Anyone who has attended concerts, operas, or ballets at either the Academy of Music or the Kimmel Center over the past three decades would have felt an immediate reassurance they were in the right place upon seeing the distinctive figure of Antoinette DuBiel, one of the longest serving ushers at either venue. She passed away Monday, Sept. 8, and funeral services were Saturday, Sept. 20, at Old St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Society Hill.

In one of those strange quirks of just how much a “tiny town” Philadelphia can be, Antoinette’s twin sister, Louise, is a member of “Old St. Joe’s” — my parish — and asked me if I would serve as thurifer (censer carrier) for the Mass of Christian Burial. I was honored and accepted.

Antoinette and I got to know each other most of all whenever Riccardo Muti conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra. As fellow-Italian Americans, we reveled in his Latin temperament above and beyond his talent. We shared many a laugh over his — shall we say — exuberance. I will miss seeing and chatting with her as the orchestra’s new season begins.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net.