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The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble organized its April 5 concert at the War Memorial’s Green Room around the idea of visual inspirations for music. The theme of “Audible Visions” led to a creative program, with all but one piece written in the past 25 years, and many kinds of musical thinking. What really mattered, of course, was what we heard, and that was marvelous.

“It was somewhat excessive,” recalled Lera Auerbach onstage, understating the compulsion she felt in 1999 to keep composing preludes. Not satisfied after creating 24 of them for piano, one for every possible key signature (C major, A minor, and so on), she produced a second set of 24 for piano and violin.

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.

Compared to Madama Butterfly and La Bohème, Puccini’s La rondine (The swallow), which premiered in 1917, is certainly a less-performed work, though it can hardly be called obscure.

If you grew up in the 1990s you probably know Duncan Sheik, the singer-songwriter who arrives this week to perform songs from his musical Whisper House with the San Francisco Symphony. His 1996 debut hit, Barely Breathing, about a stalled relationship, marries its catchy groove to an emotional honesty.

The transformation in the title of Yuja Wang's latest recording does not refer to her playing. Just as in her recitals and appearances with orchestras — more than a hundred each year — she sounds powerful but never loud, brilliant without arrogance, and always, always serving the music first, eliminating all the superficial stuff that so often plagues pianists.

If you enjoy being dazzled by virtuoso musical fireworks, then the upcoming program by the American Bach Soloists is surely designed with you in mind.