David Bratman

This combination ought to make people sit up and take notice: conductor George Cleve and pianist Peter Serkin performing Brahms’ First Piano Concerto. 

Always a seasonal highlight, the annual joint holiday concert of the Stanford Symphonic Chorus and the Peninsula Symphony, will this year feature a typically vivid pairing.

The Calder Quartet filled in at the San Jose Chamber Music Society in a program of fairly severe pieces that push, in one way or another, at the edge of the quartet idiom practice of their time.

A program that the S.F. Symphony will play on an upcoming tour featuring Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 will show the Asian audiences what our orchestra and its music director are really made of.

From the U.K., the Carducci String Quartet play Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Debussy in a captivating, clean, clear style.

Whether taking listeners on a pilgrimage or in a funeral march, pianist Cecile Licad plays to the heart of Liszt and Chopin.

The always-intriguing Ives Quartet plays a quirky Cowell work, an emotionally gritty Smetana, and an ethereal Haydn.

Performance, conducting, and solos impress at the San Francisco Symphony in a program that was intricate, complex, and pulled-off with elegance.

The California Symphony tests another guest conductor, Robert Moody, who makes the music flow with a sense of purpose.

On the cusp of its 30th anniversary, the Alexander String Quartet continues its residence at Mondavi with a performance of Schubert’s String Quartet in C Minor, D. 703, “Quartettsatz”; and his String Quartet in A Minor, D. 804, “Rosamunde.”