DaytonDailyNews.com

DAYTON — This past weekend, Oct. 17-19, may well have been the busiest this fall for fine-music patrons.

Vanguard Concerts welcomed award-winning violinist Mayuko Kamio, supported by top-tier accompanist Rohan De Silva, in a recital at the Dayton Art Institute on Friday, while Cityfolk launched its 2008-09 Celtic Series with "An Irish Homecoming" at Victoria Theatre that same evening.

Saturday then presented the dilemma of choosing between the opening-night festivities of Dayton Opera's new production of Puccini's "Turandot" at the Schuster Center and the opening recital of the Soirees Musicales International Piano Series, which promised an all-Chopin program by San Diego-based Aleck Karis. What's more, Cityfolk was hosting a performance of gypsy jazz guitar virtuosity by the John Jorgenson Quintet at Canal Street Tavern.

Then on Sunday, the Bach Society of Dayton pulled out all the stops for a late afternoon organ-centric program at Kettering Seventh-day Adventist Church, followed in the evening by a recital by world-class pianist Robert DeGaetano in the sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church in Yellow Springs.

Needless to say, difficult choices had to be made Friday and Saturday, but the Sunday schedule left enough room to attend both of the day's offerings — if you ate dinner on the run, that is.

Both of Sunday's programs felt worthy of attendance, and neither disappointed. But both also seemed to suffer the effects of too much of a good thing.

Perhaps the weariness of a full weekend clouded my perceptions, but the Bach Society seemed to try to do too much, while DeGaetano tried to squeeze a large concert hall sound into a small sanctuary setting. The first felt too long, while the second felt, well, too loud — at least to these overloaded ears.

The length of the Bach Society concert wasn't just an issue of time, however, because the singers also seemed to flag during the second half of the program, their endurance pushed to the limit.

Nevertheless, the member-run amateur group achieved some remarkable heights, particularly in the opening Kyrie and the closing Agnus Dei of the Josef Gabriel Rheinberger's Mass in E-flat Major.

The return to town of Peter Ciaschini, former concertmaster of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, to play Rheinberger's Suite for Violin and Organ was another highlight.

The DeGaetano recital in Yellow Springs, presented by the Adams Foundation of New York in collaboration with the local Yellow Springs Community Council, was big from beginning to end.

The exhaustive — and exhausting — program ranged from a late Beethoven piano sonata, to four variegated Chopin works, to Rachmaninov's "Variations on a Theme of Corelli," to a Minimalistic composition by the soloist, to a pair of French Impressionist works by Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.

DeGaetano, an extraordinary artist with a driving, assertive approach, never flagged. The effect was not unlike being knocked over by an ocean wave of musical ideas.

Contact the reporter at (937) 225-7309 or csimmons@DaytonDaily News.com.