As he starts his sixth season setting the scores, Edward Arron has effectively reshaped the long-running Musical Masterworks chamber music series in his own image.

Arron is its second-generation music artistic director, and gone are many of the favorite performers and favorite musical works of series founder (the man they now call "legend emeritus"), Charles Wadsworth. There's less of the Brahms, Poulenc and four-hand piano Wadsworth favored, and missing too are many of the series' early stalwarts, such as violinist Chee-Yun and pianist Stephen Prutsman.

The signature of the Arron era is becoming more distinct each year. He is finding ways to translate great Baroque scores into contemporary chamber music ensembles. He is freshening the repertoire with new music and removing new-music dread by including the composer as one of the performers. And the musicians he favors tend to be his pals - a very good trend, since Arron has been at the center of the chamber music scene in New York for more than a decade.

The season kicks off with concerts Saturday and Sunday in Old Lyme, before Arron, the series' resident cellist as well as majordomo, leads the performers on the usual loop of concerts in South Carolina.

On the road last month en route to a festival, Arron took time to speak of the coming season. "One more festival to go - that will make it 11 festivals," he said. "Then the summer will be officially over."

"This particular series has turned into a very important platform," Arron says, looking ahead at the new music and "new" old music he has lined up.

Well into the 1930s, orchestra conductors used to routinely alter the scores of even iconic masterpieces by Beethoven or Mozart to fit the skills or size of their orchestras. This season's Masterworks concerts are very much in that model, shaping the music to fit.

The programs will include a transcription for string trio of Bach's keyboard masterpiece, The Goldberg Variations, and a transcription by series favorite clarinetist Todd Palmer of Weber's well-known Grand Duo Concertante for clarinet and piano as the Grand Trio Concertante to include cello.

"He was sweet enough to say that he made the arrangement with me in mind," Arron says.

Having composers play their own music, such as pianist Adam Neiman who will play his 2013 Serenade for Violin and Piano, or make arrangements to suit the setting, like Palmer's rescoring of Weber, "breaks down any trepidation the audience may have about new music," Arron says.

The complete schedule appears below, but among the highlights will be the opening concert, featuring the return for the third season of violinist Tessa Lark.

In 2012, the Kentucky native now living in Boston was the first American violinist since 1960 to win the Naumburg Award, among the most prestigious performing arts awards in the world. This year, she won a $50,000 Annenburg Fellowship. She is 25 and so charismatic that some Old Lyme audience members brought her programs to autograph last year.

Lark will reprieve her 2012 debut Masterworks ensemble, when she performed Schubert's E Flat piano trio with Arron and pianist Jeewon Park in a transcendent reading of the famous piece. Next weekend, Lark will join Arron and Park to perform the Schumann Piano Trio in D Minor, a rich and direct work that should bring out the best in this expressive musician.

Here's a sample of one of Lark's performances, a violin work by Bela Bartok, in many ways similar to the Zoltan Kodaly duo she will perform next weekend with Arron:

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In the season's second program, on Dec. 6 and 7, Arron will continue his push to get the incomparable music of Bach into the series. He will be joined by Colin Jacobsen and Nicholas Cords, half of the innovative, hipster string quartet Brooklyn Rider and two of his oldest friends. Arron was the artistic director of the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert for its full 10-year run, and, he says, "Colin and Nick are two guys who played on every single concert we played at the museum."

For the final concert of that series last spring, the trio performed a 1985 arrangement of the Goldberg Variations, Bach's keyboard epic, and they will repeat that performance in Old Lyme.

"Bach is eminently transcribable, and every single note has been transcribed," Arron says. "What makes this special is that this transcription gives an individual personality to each line by placing them in different instruments."

As the season moves along, audiences in the acoustically thrilling First Congregational Church will have a chance to enjoy the return of Palmer, seldom-performed works by masters such as Schubert and Saint-Saens, and music by Debussy, Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, Pärt and Beethoven in the usual musical chairs of ensembles.

Arron has succeeded in keeping old works new and exciting and making the new works sound like classics. And this season looks like the freshest yet.

Musical Masterworks season

Performances are at 5 p.m. on Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays at the First Congregational Church at 2 Ferry Road, Old Lyme. Single sales are $35 with $5 student tickets. Seasons subscriptions are $150. Call 860-434-2252 or visit www.musicalmasterworks.org.

October 25 and 26The musicians: Jeewon Park, piano; Tessa Lark, violin; Edward Arron, cello. The program: Mozart Piano Trio in B-flat Major, K. 502; Kodàly Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7; Schumann Piano Trio in D Minor, Op. 63.

December 6 and 7The musicians: Colin Jacobsen, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; Edward Arron, cello. The program: Biber Passacaglia in G Minor for Solo Violin; Bach Goldberg Variations, arranged for string trio by Dmitri Sitkovetsky

February 14 and 15The musicians: Gilles Vonsattel, piano; Todd Palmer, clarinet; Bella Hristova, violin; Edward Arron, cello. The program: Beethoven Piano Trio in c minor, Op. 1, No. 3; Stravinsky Suite from L'histoire du Soldat for Clarinet, Violin and Piano; Debussy Sonata for Violin and Piano; Weber Grand 'Trio' Concertante for Clarinet, Piano and Cello (arr. Todd Palmer)

March 14 and 15The musicians: Adam Neiman, piano; Maria Bachmann, violin; Hsin-Yun Huang, viola; Edward Arron, cello. The program: Schubert Adagio and Rondo Concertante in F Major for Piano Quartet, D. 487; Adam Neiman Serenade for Violin and Piano; Saint-Saëns Piano Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 41; Dvorák Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 87

May 2 and 3The musicians: Rieko Aizawa, piano; Jesse Mills, violin; Hye-Jin Kim, violin;Ara Gregorian, violin and viola; Max Mandel, viola; Edward Arron, cello. The program:Turina Scène Andalouse for Viola, Piano and String Quartet, Op. 7; Mendelssohn String Quintet in A Major, Op. 18; Arvo Pärt Summa for Violin, Two Violas and Cello; Chausson Concerto in D Major for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, Op. 21.