Previews

The San Francisco Symphony gives you plenty of choices of family holiday concerts—certainly enough to schedule around your holiday parties. And Davies Symphony Hall with its beautifully decorated lobby is resplendent during the season.

Anyone who’s followed this quirky (and preposterously skilled) ensemble for any time at all knows that it’s ill-inclined to sit still, and that when it does move, it’s nearly always in a startling direction.

The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble presents Minette, an arrangement for two guitars of an opera by Hans Werner Henze constructed on the principles of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and based on a short story by Balzac about vegetarian cats that form the Royal Society for the Protection of Rats.

he opportunity to hear two great pros, the divinely voiced Karita Mattila in partnership with master accompanist Martin Katz, is irresistible.

Berkeley Symphony plays works by the beloved Lou Harrison, plus a West Coast premiere and the Sibelius Symphony No. 5.

Ancient songs with a festive yet spiritual flair set apart California Bach Society’s holiday program.

A hometown’s favorite pianist preps for a “concital” (recital plus concert) with Symphony Silicon Valley.

The New EsterházyQuartet, having run out of Haydn a couple years back, is focusing now on his contemporaries and pupils. November’s set includes a Haydn quartet, a Beethoven quartet (the formidably dark Opus 95), and quartets by Anton Reicha and Nicolas Zmeskall.

Eric Owens Bay Area recital debut contrasts German lieder with more intimate fare from Debussy and Duparc. Ravel’s Don Quichotte to Dulcinée should be the icing on the cake.

The Redwood Symphony offers Lorin Maazel's "symphonic synthesis" of the whole Ring cycle: It's like an hour-long Richard Strauss tone poem, except it's by Wagner.