Music in the city: Calder Quartet at Mostly Mozart Festival

SPF 6, the sixth annual Summer Performance Festival for fledgling modern dance companies in San Francisco, closed on Sunday with an irresistible chamber ballet by The Milissa Payne Project that brought down the house at the small-but-splendid ODC Theater in the hip Mission district.

In his first New York appearance since the termination of his contract as BSO Music Director, Nelsons courts public sympathy and makes some thrilling music.

The sparkle of Max Bruch's Fecond Violin Concerto and the drama of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony overcome the gloom of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s dark forebodings. 

Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge is paired with Haydn's Die sieben letzten Worte, a journey from agony to transcendence in which the agony proves the more honest companion.

From Three Screaming Popes to Pictures at an Exhibition, a pair of works inspired by paintings frame a violin concerto by Béla Bartók at London's Southbank Centre.