Steven Winn

San Francisco Symphony violist Jonathan Vinocour suddenly finds himself with just the right experience to play the solo in Rothko Chapel — he’s been there.

An S.F. Symphony program that looked uncannily symmetrical, concerts that began and ended with the best known works of each of the composers, offered rich and gratifying music and an orchestra under David Robertson’s baton in sweet accord.

Bucking nationwide trends, the city by the Bay's premier orchestra worked its way to the top of the symphonic world and improved its financial health, while reaching thousands of new listeners.

Twice, in Sunday’s all-star-name evening of string trio music at Davies Symphony Hall, the center held.

The great long arc of the San Francisco Symphony’s Mahler Project comes to a gentle, soft landing with Songs With Orchestra, the final CD of an unprecedented undertaking.

Music@Menlo opened a broad umbrella for “La Ville Lumiere: Paris, 1920–28,” with composers as various as Milhaud, Prokofiev, Fauré, Copland, Antheil, Ravel, and Gershwin all gathered underneath. Variety, in both style and delivery, proved to be the prevailing spirit of Saturday’s musically sprawling program.

Audience members who may feel tempted to bail out early on San Francisco Opera’s The Girl of the Golden West should be advised that the best — and briefest — act of this often wayward and wearisome production comes last. 

Listeners unacquainted with Thomas Adès can embark on a powerful, short-course introduction to the magnificently gifted young British composer with this EMI disc. The emotional pull, drama, expressive complexity, wit, and allusive richness of Adès’ music are all in evidence.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony trumps everything. What else can hold its own on a program with this searching quest that leads to the most fervent final movement in music history? The Oakland East Bay Symphony, under Music Director Michael Morgan’s baton, offered a proposal at once modest and moving.

Anyone who might have arrived very late for Saturday’s splendid New Century Chamber Orchestra concert at Herbst Theatre would have gotten an amusing summary from fiddler Evan Price.