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The picks of this year's litter (and two of the best Messiah's) for your consideration.

Johannes Brahms and Alban Berg, great Viennese masters, make a good pairing, and San Francisco Symphony brought them together for its Thanksgiving week concerts. The well-thought-out and well-executed program never quite caught fire.

If you’re looking around at the holiday concerts on offer and crave something new, drop in on the California Bach Society the first week of December, as it presents seasonal themed music by Johann Rosenmüller, with the participation of the great, local wind-band The Whole Noyse.

In the second season the New Century Chamber Orchestra continues to move forward with imaginative programs. Their recent round of concerts was in many ways a testament to the adaptability of great music in the hands of imaginative musicians.

Smule, creator of the Magic Piano app for iPad, has released the Magic Fiddle on iTunes, turning the PC tablet into a musical instrument.

La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc), has been hailed as one of the greatest cinematic masterpieces of the silent era. Efforts to wed music to this film’s haunting images have spawned several hybrid creations. Bay Area residents will have an opportunity to experience a hybrid of celluloid images and live music on Dec. 2.

Enjoy a musical cornucopia, and do some good, as well when you join San Francisco pianist, composer, and conductor Stephen Prutsman for “Bach and Forth,” a look at what the works from the composer whom Prutsman considers “the greatest Western composer of all time.”

SFCV catches up with pianist Yefim Bronfman, loved by audiences as one of the more virtuosic and commanding soloists on the concert hall stage. Emanuel Ax calls him a “complete pianist,” and Esa-Pekka Salonen says, he “can play better than most other people on the planet.”

The Peninsula Symphony Orchestra and Stanford Symphonic Chorus can reliably be depended on to present an engaging holiday concert. This year’s was particularly interdisciplinary, offering instrumental works that had no explicit connection to the season but that proved to be cheerfully appropriate nonetheless.