Michael Zwiebach

Here’s a playlist of some of the biggest hits in classical music (and one Rodgers and Hart classic), all inspired by the vernal equinox and the racing blood of youth in love.

If you heard Handel’s Messiah at Grace Cathedral last December, you may be interested in the arrival of the New College Choir from Oxford, which sings J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion at Grace on Good Friday.

In his quest to illuminate the life work of Robert Schumann, the fascinating pianist Jonathan Biss has enlisted the Elias String Quartet to pair Schumann’s string quartet and piano quartet in E-flat, with Henry Purcell’s string fantasias. 

We can’t throw a parade, but here’s a playlist ready for your celebration of all things Irish.

Thanks to the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth, his Requiem, one of the most popular choral works of all time, is sure to figure in the Bay Area concert scene a number of times this year. 

For a famous violinist, Midori cuts an intentionally low profile, so you can be forgiven for not noticing that she will be performing a Bay Area recital soon, for San Francisco Performances.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra and their dynamic leader, Richard Tognetti return  to Cal Performances for a wide-ranging pair of programs, featuring pianist Alice Sara Ott in Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

Cantare con Vivo is doing Sergei Rachmaninov’s deeply moving Vespers (All-Night Vigil) as their spring concert. 

Clerestory, the men’s choral group that is partly a spin-off from Chanticleer, is back in action on the weekend, with a program they’re calling “Bacchanalia”, a celebration of spring and music about springtime appetites.