With Disney’s "The Lion King" occupying Blaisdell Concert Hall from Jan. 14 to March 9, Honolulu’s classical music community will have to turn to chamber music and recitals in smaller venues for the first quarter of 2014. But there will be plenty of intriguing and fun events to tickle a music lover’s fancy.

One such event will be Vadym Kholodenko, gold medalist at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, in recital at Orvis Auditorium on Feb. 18. His program hasn’t been published yet, but his repertoire is vast — all 32 Beethoven sonatas, 25 concertos, 20th-century works from Stravinsky to John Adams, among others. The Ukrainian-born Kholodenko is a composer too, writing a cadenza to a Mozart piano concerto he would play at the Cliburn while on a flight to the competition.

The Honolulu Chamber Music Series gives the chamber music season an early launch Jan. 12 at Doris Duke Theatre with the presentation of the Ebene Quartet, "a string quartet that can easily morph into a jazz band," according to the . And a light-hearted event will be "Chamber Music Hawaii at the Movies," featuring Rick Benjamin, at Orvis on May 10. Benjamin, who has an archive of more than 1,000 scores of silent-movie music, will lead local musicians during screenings of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd films.

The Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra and Hawaii Opera Theatre also have some exciting new offerings this year. The symphony will give a world premiere to a concerto for koto, a Japanese instrument, on May 17, and in June will feature Conrad Tao, a prodigy who at age 19 is making big waves as both a pianist and composer.

The opera returns with some popular works, including Gilbert and Sullivan’s "The Mikado" for an unusually long run of six shows in June, but its spring production, "I Pagliacci/Carmina Burana," should be the more intriguing. The two emotionally charged works will be presented as a single production, a staging created by the Portland Opera.