The Ulysses Quartet joins Paolo Bartolani for the opening concert of this year’s Rites of Spring Music Festival, “The Beatitudes,” at RG|NY Vineyards May 12. The North Fork’s Rites of Spring Music Festival, now in its ninth season, is this year presenting a series that pairs music from cultures around the world.

The series, this year dubbed “Unexpected Correspondences,” is about “how classical music is connecting with all the cultures,” said the festival’s founder, Paolo Bartolani. The season-opening concert, on Sunday, May 12 at 5 p.m. at RG|NY Vineyard in Riverhead, is called “The Beatitudes.” It’s a program for piano and string quartet that opens with a challenging piece by Shostakovich.

“Shostakovich wrote the piece during Stalin in Russia, and during these years, we are still in the same situation,” said Mr. Bartolani. “the idea is to make it like a journey from the terrible human condition and how to get to the Beatitudes,” the biblical place where we are all children in God’s garden. Another Russian composer, Vladimir Martynov, shows the way.