David Bratman

The San José Chamber Orchestra celebrated Johann Sebastian Bach on Sunday and the evening began with a bang.

In a S.F. Symphony performance of John Adams' El Niño, conducted by the composer, revealed itself to be an oratorio for the turn of the new century in a concert of warm Christmas music that was, rightfully, warmly received.

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.

You have probably heard Carl Orff's Carmina Burana before. If you're like me, you've heard it many times. Even so, I have never heard it the way the S.F. Symphony played it on Wednesday.

What music do you expect to hear at a Halloween concert? The Santa Cruz Chamber Players lack the forces necessary for warhorses, so in their concert at Christ Lutheran they were forced to be creative. It made for a festive holiday occasion.

String quartet concerts customarily feature the old masters, or the medium-old masters, and apologetically stick small quantities of modern music in the corners of the program. At Sunday night’s concert at the Kohl Mansion in Burlingame, though, the opposite plan — feature the contemporary works, and stick the old masters in the corner — was enacted by the Lark Quartet.

Symphony Silicon Valley’s showcase of Hungary came in an exploration in the obscure but worthy corners of the repertoire and a young and dazzling solo performer. Three works by modern Hungarian composers of the same generation, plus three by foreigners evoking the country, were saved from being too much of the same thing by liveliness and a riot of orchestral color.

Sunday night’s concert by the Shanghai Quartet at Le Petit Trianon in San José opened the 25th season of the San José Chamber Music Society. It also served as the Society’s contribution to Shanghai Celebration 2010, a Bay Area–wide, yearlong festival commemorating San Francisco’s sister-city relationship with the Chinese city.

The Redwood Symphony celebrated its 25th anniversary on Saturday, opening its season with a potpourri of pleasing music at Cañada College in Redwood City. Eric Kujawsky, who founded the orchestra and has been its music director for all 25 years, conducted the occasion.

After two centuries of an increasing reputation as a “Land Without Music,” whose homegrown composers weren’t considered worth importing by disapproving Germans, England suddenly flowered with a blossom of great composers starting around the turn of the 20th century. A garland of works by three of these masters formed “The English Voice,” the second of this year’s Music@Menlo chamber music festival main concert programs.