Orchestra

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.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, the composer/conductor who until recent years led the Los Angeles Philharmonic, brings to the Pacific shore the same Philharmonia Orchestra whose many recordings with some of the greatest conductors of the latter 20th century have achieved legendary status.

The Oakland East Bay Symphony concludes the national election work week with all American composers.

Tis the season for late Brahms, and the San Francisco Symphony under late replacement conductor Asher Fisch delivered a somber, powerful reading of the composer’s last symphony.

We were all grateful for Esa-Pekka Salonen’s tenure as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. But we’re even happier to see him creating works like this brilliant Violin Concerto.

Two superstars will be playing two No. 2 concertos too difficult for most other mortals.

The California Symphony opens its conductor search with Robert Moody fronting the orchestra in a straight-down –the-middle program.

On Sunday, in Veterans Memorial Park in Napa, the former members of the NVS will present a free concert in the park, as a thank you to their supporters and patrons.

The Target Summer Pops Festival, featuring the Symphony Silicon Valley starts the final weekend in July. It’s a premier South Bay event, which takes place outdoors on the San Jose State campus, and features a variety of old-fashioned pops fare.