There's been something of an earthquake in the seldom seismic world of chamber music: David Finckel, the big-toned cellist of the Emerson String Quartet for all but three years of its thirty-six-year existence, will exit the group at the end of the current season. Because his place will be taken by the gifted Welsh cellist Paul Watkins, no one feels great alarm. Still, it's a bit of a shock.... The Opera Company of Philadelphia, evidently bucking the trends that shuttered Opera Boston and nearly brought down New York City Opera, have announced an adventurous 2012-13 season: Britten's Owen Wingrave, Adès's Powder Her Face, and Kevin Puts's Silent Night alongside La Bohème and The Magic Flute. David Patrick Stearns has more.... On Thursday, Miller Theater presents the world premiere of Poems and Prayers, the third symphony of Mohammed Fairouz.... Juilliard's AXIOM give Rihm's Jagden und Formen a spin on Feb. 17. On Feb. 27, Jeffrey Milarsky leads the annual concert of Juilliard student composers. Both shows are free.... In coming days, the Avant Music Festival offers a centenary performance of Pierrot lunaire, a rendition of Eve Beglarian's Songs from the River and Elsewhere, and a Randy Gibson piece with a really long title.... The Electronic Music Foundation presents electronic works of Luigi Nono between Feb. 26 and Feb. 28.... Stucky time in NYC: the Philharmonic plays his Son et lumière Feb. 23-28, the Pittsburgh Symphony his Rachel Carson-inspired Silent Spring on Feb. 26. (The New Yorker published Carson's work just shy of fifty years ago.) ... Notable musicological tomes now in stores: Susan McClary's Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music, Christopher Gibbs's one-volume "college edition" of Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music.... Worth a close read: John Halle's extended essay on new music and Occupy Wall Street. A footnote to the section on Obama and the arts: his FY 2013 budget calls for a slight increase in arts funding.
