ClevelandClassical.com editors’ top five event picks for the week of March 2, 2015. Do enjoy.

Cavani Quartet 30th Anniversary. This all-female string quartet was founded three decades ago in Columbus and has spent most of its time since then in residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music, training young musicians through the Intensive String Quartet Program and taking on big community projects (a few years ago, they played all of Beethoven’s sixteen quartets around the area, one at a time, in public libraries). Violinists Anne Fullard and Mari Sato, violist Kirsten Docter and cellist Merry Peckham celebrate this milestone with a concert of music by Shostakovich and Mendelssohn, joined by their old friends, violist Donald Weilerstein and pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein. It’s free on Wednesday, March 4 at 8:00 pm in Kulas Hall at CIM.

Westminster Abbey organist James O’Donnell crosses the pond for a brief American tour this week. He calls in at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights on Friday, March 6 at 7:30 pm to play selections from J.S. Bach’s German Organ Mass, British pieces by Elgar and Vaughan Williams, and selections from Charles-Marie Widor’s Symphony No. 6. Thanks to St. Paul’s and the Cleveland chapter of the American Guild of Organists, the concert on the Holtkamp organ is free, but donations are welcome. O’Donnell will also display his expertise in working with young voices on Saturday, March 7 at Trinity Cathedral. A day-long workshop for trebles ends with Choral Evensong at 3:00 pm.

Les Délices, Cleveland’s experts in French baroque music, team up with soprano Nola Richardson to perform Tenebrae Lessons (settings of poetry by Hebrew prophet Jeremiah) by François Couperin and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Also in the band: Debra Nagy & Kathie Stewart, recorders and flute, Julie Andrijeski & Scott Metcalfe, violins, Cynthia Black, viola, Josh Lee, viola da gamba & Michael Sponseller, organ. You have three opportunities to catch this show: it’s free on Friday, March 6 at 7:30 pm in Fairchild Chapel at Oberlin, but you’ll need tickets on Saturday, March 7 at 8:00 pm at Historic St. Peter’s in downtown Cleveland and on Sunday, March 8 at 4:00 pm at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Learn more about the music on Sunday at 3 from pre-concert lecturer Peter Bennett.

The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, led by Tim Weiss, gives the world premiere performances of a new work by Oberlin faculty composer Aaron Helgeson. His Snow Requiem is based on the famous 1888 “Children’s Blizzard” that claimed hundreds of lives in the upper Midwest. The piece features soprano Alice Teyssier and violinist David Bowlin, along with a 16-voice chorus, strings, percussion, and harp. The intriguing program also includes Sofia Gubaidulina’s Concerto for Bassoon and Low Strings with Ben Roidl-Ward in the solo role, and the late British composer Jonathan Harvey’s Wheel of Emptiness. There are two performances: on Friday, March 6 at 8:00 pm in Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall (free), and on Saturday, March 7 at 2:00 pm in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art ($5 at the door).

And early next week, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society brings the Vienna Piano Trio to its free, Monday evening series on March 9 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Church. The program includes Beethoven’s “Cockatoo” Variations, Brahms’s Trio No. 1 in its original version, and — here’s the really interesting item— a piano arrangement by Eduard Stuermann of Arnold Schoenberg’s famous string sextet, Transfigured Night (Verklärte Nacht), based on a poem by Richard Dehmel.

Check out the details of these and many other classical concerts in Northeast Ohio on ClevelandClassical.com’s Concert Listings page.

This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2015.