Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Now’s the time when major arts organizations start sending out their program lists for the coming season, making sure to get ticket commitments from winter residents who soon will be heading North again.

The Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale and the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach have announced their classical lineups for the 2010-11 season, and many familiar faces will be back – Itzhak Perlman, Sir James Galway, André Watts, Jean-Yves Thibaudet – and there also will be the usual spate of out-of-town orchestras beefing up things.

Perhaps the most unusual will be a visit from the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra of Cape Town, South Africa, which will be on its first-ever American tour when it stops at the Parker Playhouse on Feb. 11. For that concert, violinist Philippe Quint will play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto on a program with the Bernstein Candide Overture and Scheherazade, Rimsky-Korsakov’s popular depiction of the wily sultan’s wife who saved her life with her gift for storytelling.

Quint’s performance will mark the second reading of the Tchaikovsky concerto so far in the coming season; it’s a work that comes around time and again during a typical season. But what caught my attention was a concert a few days later (Feb. 20) at the Kravis, when the veteran conductor Zubin Mehta leads the Israel Philharmonic in the Fifth Symphony of Gustav Mahler.

That will mark the third performance of this titanic work in a period of about 10 months, which is rather a lot when you consider how tough this remarkable piece is to perform. Besides the beautiful and much-excerpted Adagietto movement, there are four other movements that take the listener on a journey from anguish to triumph. It always makes a great impact when it’s played well.

Next month, Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony take on the Mahler Fifth on a program that also features the Copland Piano Concerto, an early, rarely heard work that will be played by the exceptional Jeremy Denk. The concerts are set for April 10 and 11 at the Knight Concert Hall.

Up in Palm Beach County in October, the orchestra of the Lynn University Conservatory of Music tackles the Mahler Fifth for the debut of the school’s brand-new 752-seat performing arts center, dedicated last week. The $14.9 million hall, named for Keith C. and Elaine Johnson Wold, stands to be an important additional concert venue in South Florida. Look for major acts to make it a regular stop in the years to come.

Then it’s Mehta’s turn early in 2011, a year that marks the 100th anniversary of Mahler’s death from endocarditis at the age of 50, when he was in the middle of a career that was taking him to new heights of fame and fortune in New York. No doubt that’s one of the reasons for the appearance of more Mahler on our stages, and for those of us who cherish his music, it will be enlightening to hear all three readings of this seminal piece of writing from this great late Romantic composer.