Orchestra

When Michael Tilson Thomas programmed the San Francisco Symphony's semistaged production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe for June 18-21, little did he know how au courant it would be.

The musically merry month of May came to a close on Sunday, traditionally as ever, with concerts conjoined to graduations, two that could not have been more different.

The San Francisco Symphony's "Dawn to Twilight" festival got off to a more than solid start with its opening run of concerts at Davies Symphony Hall beginning last Wednesday.

Michael Tilson Thomas treated San Francisco Symphony patrons Friday to an extraordinary concert of works that advanced the field of classical music — each pushing the envelope in its own direction.A symphony built a monument to regenerative self-defeat, a concerto scaled heights of immediacy and technical difficulty, and a new suite blazed a path toward rapturous acceptance of electronica into the

“Shadows and Light” was the theme of the final four concerts of the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s current season, with the repertoire selected for references to the night. But what really shone through the five pieces on the variegated program was how wonderfully the music and the players were suited to each other.

Small fit all at Sunday’s Berkeley Akadamie concert, but medium and large were another story. The opening number, Mozart’s Divertimento in D Major, K. 136, was played by only a string quintet. It was so well done, and the First Congregational Church acoustics were so beneficial, that the five sounded like a full string orchestra.

When it came to the soloists, the “Show Boat in Concert/From the Jerome Kern Songbook,” this season’s American Masterworks Series installment from the Oakland East Bay Symphony, scored a well-deserved 10.

Olivier Messiaen’s 10-movement Turangalîla-Symphonie is rarely performed because of its length (about an hour and a quarter) and its unusual instrumentation (the score calls for ondes martenot, vibraphone, and glockenspiel, among many other instruments). The double whammy makes performances of this 20th-century masterpiece hard to find — and fund.

Everybody knows Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Each century has its standard, default large-scale choral work (Messiah, Verdi’s Requiem), and, like it or not, Carmina Burana fills that role for the 20th.

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is living up the "lucky" part of his name as the world celebrates his 200th birthday. Were he alive, he might revel in the good fortune of being well honored by Vance George and the San Francisco State Chamber Singers.