It’s been quite a week for the symphonic arts in Miami. The New World Center opened Wednesday in Miami Beach with a new piece by Thomas Adès (Polaris: Voyage for Orchestra), and those who missed the world premiere (the New World Symphony’s program also includes the Copland Third Symphony and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman Overture) can head over to 17th Street for an encore performance tonight (Friday, Jan. 28).

Also tonight is the opening of the fifth annual Miami residency of the Cleveland Orchestra.

The orchestra’s program, the first of two at the Knight Concert Hall, will feature the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard in the Schumann Piano Concerto. Musical director Franz Welser-Möst has also programmed Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben and Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. It’s a meat-and-potatoes kind of concert, and should bring in a decent audience tonight and Saturday night.

The other two programs in the residency also feature popular solo repertory. On March 4 and 5, the German violinist Augustin Hadelich offers the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, while guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero leads the Enigma Variations of Elgar, the Colas Breugnon Overture of Dmitri Kabalevsky, and Ravel’s deathless Boléro.

Pianist Horacio Gutierrez comes to the Knight on April 8 and 9 with the Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto, and guest conductor Jiri Belohlavek conducts the Miracle Symphony (No. 96 in D) of Haydn, and the Symphony No. 7 (in D minor, Op. 70) of Antonin Dvorak.

On the afternoon of April 9, the orchestra will host a family concert featuring The Composer Is Dead, with music by Nathaniel Stookey and text by Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler), a murder mystery that also introduces children to the instruments of the orchestra. And throughout the residency, the Cleveland will be doing the kind of educational outreach that arts groups find so necessary to do these days.

The orchestra has produced some video interviews with Welser-Möst about the residency in general and about working with Aimard in particular, and in the first one, he talks about the liveliness of the arts scene in Miami and what it means for him and the orchestra. It’s good to hear him say that South Florida has such a strong arts community, because it always comes as something of a surprise to folks who don’t get too many opportunities to spend time here.

The arrival of the Cleveland Orchestra each year raises the perennial questions about whether South Florida ever will have a major orchestra such as the Florida Philharmonic ever again. The orchestral academy that is the New World Symphony does a wonderful job of filling in that gap in our musical life, but there’s still room for another full-size orchestra here that also could send down roots and grow with the community.

Perhaps in this season’s give-and-take between Ohioans and Floridians will come some kind of answer to this question, even if it doesn’t happen right away. Surely the enthusiastic response the Cleveland Orchestra enjoys from Miami-area audiences is indicative of the strength not just of the ensemble’s undisputed excellence, but of the fertile local soil on which an orchestra of our own could grow.