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Too often the summer season finds music ensembles going on physical or artistic hiatus, taking an extended vacation or programming concerts heavy on lighter repertory. Not so the San Francisco Choral Society, a symphonic chorus under the musical direction of Robert Geary, which bucks the tide with substantial works by Beethoven and Britten on July 31 and Aug. 1 at San Francisco’s Calvary Presbyterian Church.

The Midsummer Mozart Festival has never been about the kind of easy-listening, check-your-brain-at-the-door fare that plagues many summer concerts. Music Director George Cleve wasted no time making that point Friday evening at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, as he and the orchestra got the annual Mozart bash off to a characteristically vibrant start.

When Eleazar Rodriguez sang Fenton's aria from Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor Friday in Herbst Theatre, I experienced a multiple déjà vu. This was the opening concert of the Merola Program Class of 2010, but I was back at a similar occasion 12 years ago, listening to Charles Castronovo for the first time.

It’s a tried-and-true strategy for constructing programs, concerts, and CDs alike: Make certain there’s a surefire favorite in there somewhere, then pack around it as much unfamiliar music as you dare. Not often, though, have I seen it deployed as baldly as it is on the new Mozart recording by the Cleveland-based period-instrument orchestra Apollo’s Fire.

Mi Alma Mexicana abounds in revelations. That its all-Mexican classic repertoire, which ranges from sedate, 120-year-old, European-influenced salon music to uncommonly savage modern fare, arrives with such wide-eyed freshness and power owes as much to the abundant gifts of 29-year-old conductor Alondra de la Parra as to the artistry of the young members of her 6-year-old Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (POA).

Franz Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise (The Winter journey) exercises a remarkable pull on singers. The great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recorded the 24-song cycle seven times while his equally iconic predecessor and contemporary, bass-baritone Hans Hotter, left us with three. On July 25, at Music@Menlo, baritone Randall Scarlata and pianist Gilbert Kalish will join the long list of artists who have attempted to enthrall listeners with this chilling masterpiece about lost love.

It’s time for sentimental pirates, crazy cops, gleeful maidens, an incompetent Major General, and a spirited chorus to tread the boards, as Lamplighters Music Theater opens its 2010-2011 season July 29 with the comedic Gilbert and Sullivan favorite The Pirates of Penzance. Its jokes, which have tickled funny bones for over 130 years, are still funny. That is, thanks to the impeccable timing and expertise of actors/singers in a company that remains one of the foremost Gilbert and Sullivan repertory troupes in the U.S.

The SFCV premiere of BACH & friends is SOLD OUT!  Thank you for your support.

San Francisco native and Julliard grad Wayne Lee returns to his old stomping grounds to join pianist Wayne Graber in a complete traversal of the Beethoven violin sonatas in three concerts, beginning on Friday July 19 at the Crowden School in Berkeley.