Orchestra

The North American premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s 2007 Violin Concerto No. 2, In tempus praesens (In the present time), arrived Thursday as an important musical event, revealing a strong, compelling, unusual, and rewarding work.

Symphony programs often resemble three-ring circuses, organized in time rather than space. In the first ring, the symphony offers an overture or similar fare to whet your aural appetite. Then, in the center ring, comes the main attraction, usually a soloist displaying his chops in a concerto or other showpiece.

We Bay Area concertgoers see a fair number of visiting soloists, but they tend to come playing with either our orchestras or their own accompanists. Violinist Julia Fischer has been here several times before — twice with the San Francisco Symphony, once with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, once in recital, and always as the star attraction.

Two works on last Wednesday’s San Francisco Symphony program; two different conductors with the same name. Kurt Masur 1 nicely portrayed the manifold strengths of Sofia Gubaidulina’s composition The Light of the End, which he premiered with the Boston Symphony in 2003. Then Kurt Masur 2 came out after intermission and cruelly exposed all the flaws of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No.

Conductor David Robertson returned to San Francisco last week to lead the San Francisco Symphony in performances of Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, and Scriabin. Robertson once again showed his uncanny ability to summon forth rapturous sounds from this ensemble.

It was almost as if Herbst Theatre itself were smiling in delight Thursday as Nicholas McGegan and his Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra played a memorial tribute to Felix Mendelssohn’s bicentennial. The audience seemed even more delighted. Glancing up and down my aisle, I noted that every face had a broad expression of pure pleasure.