Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, the local chamber orchestra founded in 1982 by its Music Conductor Allan Birney, begin its 2018-2019 season with a program of “Pomp and Passion,” 7:30 p.m. Oct. 6, Christ Lutheran Church, Allentown.

With an orchestra that is deliberately small in size to play classical chamber music, the sound is agile and intimate. Listeners can easily distinguish the different instruments in the musical mix. Birney programs works that showcase the capabilities of the chamber orchestra.

The concert opens with a grand ceremonial piece, “Entrance of the Queen of Sheba,” by G. F. Handel. The brief but stirring work for two oboes and strings is from the English oratorio “Solomon,” first performed in 1749.

Featured soloist is Sinfonia principal violist Agnès Maurer. She and the PSO will perform “Trauermusik (Mourning Music) for Viola and Strings” by early 20th century German composer Paul Hindemith.

About “Trauermusik,” Maurer said, “It is one of the most beautiful pieces written for viola. While playing it I can feel the different phases of dying: the sadness, the acceptance, the anger and finally the internal peace when ready to face the Almighty.

“Hindemith, a violist himself, mastered the use of the soulful sounds of the viola for this ‘Music of Mourning,’” Maurer said.

Maurer, a native of France, emigrated to the United States in 1976 and studied viola at the Peabody Conservatory and New School of Music. Maurer is principal violist of the Allentown Symphony Orchestra.

The program includes works by Joseph Haydn and Felix Mendelssohn. The Haydn piece is his rhythmic and stately “Symphony No. 49 in F, ‘La Passione,’” written in the latter half of the 18th century. Haydn died in 1809, just months after Mendelssohn was born.

The “Sinfonia No. 9 in C” of Mendelssohn that concludes the Sinfonia concert is an early work (he was 12) incorporating folk songs he heard the year before on a visit to Switzerland.

Tickets: at the door, Christ Lutheran Church, 1245 W. Hamilton St., Allentown; Pennsylvania Sinfonia office, 610 434-7811; PASinfonia.org