The first important contact other than his teachers that the young Johannes Brahms made was with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Remenyi. The two toured together for about two years in the early 1850s, but it was the connection that Brahms formed with one of Remenyi’s former classmates, Joseph Joachim, that was to prove so important to the composer. Remenyi had a major 50-year career of his own, always playing to wide acclaim, and, indeed, he died with his boots on: In May 1898, he had a fatal stroke on stage while playing a concert in San Francisco.

Remenyi’s name is revered in his native Hungary, and, 30 years ago, a violinist named Karoly Gal founded the Remenyi Ede Chamber Orchestra (“Remenyi Ede” is the way the violinist’s name is written in that country, where family names are listed first). This week, the orchestra joins the Fort Lauderdale-based Symphony of the Americas (pictured above) for its annual Summerfest month of local concerts, which will be given in numerous venues in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, along with a stop in Vero Beach.

The concerts, which open Friday night at Fort Lauderdale’s Sunshine Cathedral, will feature violinist Laszlo Pap, a native of Hungary who’s lived in South Florida for years and whose work is familiar from his work with the Florida Philharmonic, the Delray and Fort Lauderdale string quartets and freelance work in opera orchestras and the numerous smaller symphonic ensembles hereabouts. He’s a fine player with a strong sense of showmanship, and the program for the concerts will allow him to demonstrate that with the “Meditation” from Jules Massenet’s opera “Thais,” and the Chaconne of Tomaso Vitali.

The rest of the program is similarly on the lighter side of the classical spectrum: The “Elegy” from the Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings, two pieces by Astor Piazzolla (“Contrabajeando” and “Libertango”), an early Divertimento (in D, K. 136) by a 16-year-old Mozart, a four-violin concerto by Vivaldi (in B minor, RV 580), a sinfonia by Boccherini (No. 6 in D minor, Op. 12, No. 4) and a divertimento (No. 1, Op. 20) by the Hungarian pianist and composer Leo Weiner.

The Symphony of the Americas, led by James Brooks-Bruzzese, is marking the 20th year of Summerfest, which it bills as “the longest-running music festival in South Florida.” Cultural outreach is a big part of the festival’s mission (as well as the orchestra itself), and the festival includes a week of concerts in Panama (July 10-17) and Ecuador (July 28-Aug. 1).

Traditionally, the South Florida summer is a relatively barren one for classical music, but there are things going on if you know where to look. The Summerfest series is one place, and further north in Palm Beach County, the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, also in its 20th year, gets under way Friday with its four three-day weekends of concerts.

On this year’s bill are Stravinsky’s landmark “L’Histoire du Soldat,” Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht” and the Serenade (in B-flat, K. 361) for 13 winds by Mozart, which many listeners will remember as the piece that interrupts Mozart and Constanze — “My music! They’ve started without me!” — in the first moments of the 1984 film “Amadeus.”

And Thursday night, guitarist David Leisner appears in concert on the Community Arts series at the Coral Gables Congregational Church. That series is older still, having been founded in 1985. The terrific Canadian violinist and Bradenton resident James Ehnes performed on the series in late June, and the concerts move into jazz after that, with Glen David Andrews (July 21), the Shannon Powell Quartet (Aug. 4) and vocalist Marlena Shaw (Aug. 18).

If you visit that site and see the video of folks (including James Judd and Matthew Steynor) who turned out for the Ehnes recital, you’ll also see a lot of people in the background, a good sign for those of us who insist it’s not just seasonal residents who will turn out for these programs. These are the sorts of events that get us through the hot, hurricane-watchful months, and one can only wish that we’ll be able to get some more before too long.