- December 29, 2025
Daytona Solisti will open “Winter Music Festival,” the ensemble’s 2026 concert season, with a Jan. 11 performance that includes one of Mozart’s most difficult works – the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478, featuring pianist Michael Rickman with violinist Susan Pitard Acree, violist Zoriy Zinger and cellist Joseph Corporon.
The program also will include Franz Schubert’s great Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat Major, D 960, also performed by Dr. Rickman. The Daytona Solisti Chamber Players piano trio will perform these works during “Chamber Music Masterpieces,” its concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 11 at Port Orange Presbyterian Church, 4662 S. Clyde Morris Blvd., Port Orange.
The 2026 concert season also will feature the Daytona Solisti Classical Players, a string chamber orchestra, performing “Baroque and Romantic Gems” at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 15, and “Romantic Realms” at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 15. Those concerts also will be held at the Port Orange Presbyterian Church, where Solisti is in residence. Admission to each concert is a $15 requested donation. For more information on Daytona Solisti, call 386-562-5423 or go online at daytonasolisti.com.
The dazzling talent that Mozart displayed in composing his Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor proved to be too much for Vienna, Austria’s music circle in the late 1700s. In 1785, publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister commissioned Mozart to write three piano quartets. However, the first work Mozart completed, the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, was quite difficult to perform.
“The publisher had intended the works for Vienna’s amateur musicians; the composer, it seems, did not,” wrote musicologist Christopher Anderson-Bazzol on laphil.com, the website of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “The technical demands on the performers, not to mention the complexity of the music itself, resulted in poor sales.” And so Hoffmeister cancelled the remainder of the commission.
The January concert also will feature Rickman performing Austrian composer Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat Major, D. 960. Schubert, who lived from 1797 to 1828, bridged the Classical and Romantic periods of music.
Though very prolific, Schubert was neglected and largely unknown until after his death at age 31, when fellow composers such as Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms and others began to champion his works. Musicologist Orrin Howard, writing for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, said the Piano Sonata No. 21, composed just weeks before Schubert’s death, is “well-nigh perfect . . . From the exalted opening measures to the exuberant final ones, pure inspiration never faltered. Substance and craft are married in a miraculous union.”
Acree founded Daytona Solisti in 2005 soon after she and her husband moved to the Daytona area from Atlanta. She previously played violin in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for 22 years. Rickman is an internationally acclaimed pianist and Steinway Artist (an honor bestowed by the piano maker). He retired from Stetson University in April 2017 after 34 years as professor of piano at the DeLand school. He has been named Professor Emeritus at Stetson as well as Daytona Solisti Artist in Residence. Rickman and Acree have been collaborating musically for 19 years.
Zoriy Zinger, a professional violist and violinist, has been a member of Daytona Solisti from the beginning and currently holds the position of principal second violin in the Classical Players chamber orchestra. He is also a well-known freelance musician in the Central Florida area. Joseph Corporon is a founding member of Daytona Solisti and principal cellist. He has had a rich professional career as both cellist and church director of music.
Solisti’s “Baroque and Romantic Gems” concert on Feb. 15 will include works by William Boyce, Arcangelo Corelli, Antonio Vivaldi, Henri-Gustave Casadesus, Fritz Kreisler and Gustav Holst. This concert will feature soloists from within the orchestra performing well-known works for their respective instruments.
The “Romantic Realms” concert on March 15 will feature works by Felix Mendelssohn, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Camille Saint-Saëns, Max Bruch and Mozart. This concert will also feature soloists from within the orchestra. Michael Rickman will perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12, KV 414 to conclude the program.
