Jason Victor Serinus

Hard to believe, given the slew of awards she has received in the last 10 months, but soprano Leah Crocetto’s Schwabacher Debut Recital in Temple Emanu-el’s Meyer Sanctuary on Sunday afternoon was her first full-length classical recital anywhere. Despite her inexperience, the results were mind-boggling.

The dance begins at sunrise, as French-Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra into the “Lever du Jour” section of Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé – Suite No.

Last June, soprano Leah Crocetto won the first prize, Spanish Prize, and People’s Choice at the José Iturbi International Music Competition in Los Angeles. On March 14, she was one of five winners of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in New York City.

Forty-nine minutes into our chat about the San Francisco Symphony Chorus’ Spring Concert, Music Director Ragnar Bohlin addresses what makes him tick.

Mezzo-soprano Alice Coote is a great artist. In an unforgettable San Francisco Performances recital Friday in Herbst Theatre, which also marked her local recital debut, Coote and her equally brilliant accompanist, Julius Drake, lavished on their audience an entire evening of songs in English, giving more attention to tone and color than I have heard in many a year.

You’d hardly know that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Hugo Wolf (1860-1903). Even as orchestras and music publications worldwide extol the praises of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), church bells are hardly pealing Wolf melodies.

“All we conductors have a vision of how the music should sound ideally,” he says on the patio of the near idyllic, precariously perched Berkeley hills rental he shares with his cellist wife and children.

Like the footsteps of a life partner, Beethoven’s music is heard so frequently that it’s easy to take it for granted. But listen to Austrian pianist Till Fellner’s ECM New Series CD of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos No. 4 and 5, performed with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal under Kent Nagano, and the love affair is renewed.