Michelle Dulak Thomson

There's concert programming as science, programming as art — and programming as pure, primal indulgence.

Grateful though we must be for the continual flow of new, exciting young ensembles to Bay Area concert halls, it's another and possibly greater pleasure when the most impressive of them drop in a second time.

In a Bay Area music scene crammed full of resolute, relentless eclectics, the Del Sol Quartet stands out less for packing bewilderingly various elements into its programs than for doing it with such ease and stylishness.

It's one of the quirks of the music business that star players tend to get locked into playing and recording only the most familiar repertoire, at least early in stardom. Look at the trajectory of any young violinist signed by a major label (if, that is, you can find one).

One of the pleasures of working in the field of early music — really early music, that is, music from well outside the ordinary classical musician's realm of experience — must be the sense of having found a corner of the repertoire and built a relationship to it, minutely and intimately and genuinely from scratch.

As we begin the new year, San Francisco Classical Voice takes a look back at the performances of 2007 that some of our reviewers most enjoyed. As with any such list, the choices are entirely subjective.

It's yet another measure of how good we, the listening public, have it in the Bay Area that while the seasons of our "major presenters" would keep a voracious concertgoer pretty happy by themselves, you could eliminate every one of them from consideration and still put together a full — nay, impossibly overfull — calendar of first-rate recitals out of the offerings of the smaller concert

Brahms chamber music seems to be breaking out unnervingly in threes this season. First it was the three string quartets on a single program (the Emerson Quartet, in October). Coming up in February are the three piano trios (Nicholas Angelich and the brothers Capuçon, courtesy of San Francisco Performances).

So many and illustrious are the touring string quartets that pass through the Bay Area in any given season that it can be difficult to remember the ones that are here all year round.

Of the great Christian holidays, Christmas affords composers perhaps the greatest range between grandeur and simplicity. At one end, the whole of Creation rejoices; at the other, a tiny infant in a hovel is the linchpin of all things.