Isabelle Faust performs with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall. (Courtesy NYP)

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Shostakovich: The Complete Quartets, Cycle 1
The Jerusalem Quartet
Alice Tully Hall
March 17-24
It’s not often that part of a chamber music series is preceded by the launch of its own multi-feature, interactive web site. However, Shostakovich’s string quartets were composed between 1934 and 1974 under the constraints of Soviet Socialist Realism and are rife with embedded codes and symbols. So it seems appropriate that audiences would be invited to participate in some type of interactivity in addition to listening. The Jerusalem Quartet performs the complete cycle of the quartets over four concerts.

San Francisco Symphony
Carnegie Hall
March 21
The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, which won a Grammy last month for Best Orchestral Performance for its recording of several John Adams works, performs Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. The composer’s last fully completed symphony, the work premiered on June 26, 1912—after Mahler’s death in May of the previous year. Music director Michael Tilson Thomas made his San Francisco Symphony debut conducting the work in 1974 when he was just 29. Here, he conducts the SFO’s final Carnegie Hall appearance of the season.

Note: As you may have heard, the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra went on strike Wednesday March 13, 2013. The president of the Musicians Union of San Francisco, Local 6, David Schoenbrun, said that key sticking points include salaries, health care, touring and work rules. Mr. Schoenbrun claimed a "bait and switch" regarding the health care proposal that was in the process of being negotiated had ultimately caused the work stoppage. A rep for Carnegie Hall said that the two Carnegie Hall concerts the orchestra has scheduled for March 20 and 21 remain on the schedule. If they're canceled, Carnegie Hall policy dictates that ticket holders receive a refund. The musicians of the San Francisco Symphony last went on strike in 1997, a work stoppage that lasted 9 weeks.

New York Philharmonic
Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall
March 20-23
German violinist Isabelle Faust, somewhat of a hidden gem for American audiences, performs Bach’s violin concertos in A minor and E major, as part of the orchestra’s The Bach Variations festival. Ms. Faust is a frequent performer of contemporary music but here turns her attention to two Baroque concertos—conducted by Bernard Labadie, himself an early music expert.

Los Angeles Philharmonic
Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall
March 27
The New York premiere of John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary takes center stage under the baton of conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Mr. Adams’s oratorio, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and premiered earlier in the month, tells the New Testament stories of both Lazarus and Jesus’s Passion. A post performance discussion follows.

Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Carnegie Hall
March 28
After last year’s performance of Mozart’s Requiem, in which conductor Iván Fischer interspersed the chorus with the OSL to involve the instrumentalists with the text, Mr. Fischer returns with Musica Sacra for Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. The group has a warm and long-standing relationship with Mr. Fischer, which is sure to make this performance of the choral masterpiece well worth catching.

Metropolitan Opera
Rigoletto
Metropolitan Opera House
April 13-May 1
Sometimes the operatic reinterpretations coming out of General Manager Peter Gelb’s Met garner headache-inducing reviews. But director Michael Mayer’s 1960s “Rat Pack” setting of Verdi’s tragic tale has gotten accolades. It’s certainly a visual spectacle—thanks in large part to the work of set designer Christine Jones, who brings familiar Vegas kitsch to life. A new cast takes over for the April and May performances—with Vittorio Grigolo, Lisette Oropesa and George Gagnidze.

Mitsuko Uchida, piano
Carnegie Hall
April 18
The pianist, known for her interpretation of works by Mozart and Beethoven (her Decca Classics recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerti Nos. 23 and 24 won a 2011 Grammy—her first), switches things up here with this recital program of Bach, Schumann and Schoenberg. Dame Uchida has been called “peerless and magical” by the British press. This Carnegie Hall program features two Preludes and Fugues from Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces and several works by Schumann.

Kronos Quartet
Carnegie Hall
May 3
As part of its Late Nights at Zankel Hall and My Time, My Music series, Carnegie Hall presents the Kronos Quartet, which, for almost 40 years, has tasked itself with “expanding the range and context of the string quartet.” Clearly this isn’t your parent’s string quartet. Fans of the San Francisco-based group, and of new music in general, should rejoice. This concert includes the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s You Know Me from Here and the New York premiere of Valentyn Silvestrov’s String Quartet No. 3, among other works.

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Carnegie Hall
May 17
Sir Simon Rattle conducts Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre with soprano Barbara Hannigan. With little unexpected on the classical stage, the singer’s past reviews for performances of Ligeti’s work (“the singer charged across the podium in patent leather,” read a 2012 review from Münchner Merkur) suggest staid audiences expecting a hum-drum evening out might be in for a surprise. The remainder of the program features Webern’s Passacaglia Op. 1, Berg’s Three Fragments from Wozzeck, and Beethoven Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral.”

Brooklyn Philharmonic
You’re Causing Quite a Disturbance
Brooklyn Academy of Music
June 8, 2013
As part of the Brooklyn Philharmonic’s Bed-Stuy series, Grammy winner Erykah Badu and Bed Stuy native Yaslin Bey—known to most as Mos Def—present a program of collaborative arrangements of songs from New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War and works by composer Ted Hearne. At a time when orchestras everywhere are struggling to find ways to reach out to new audiences and broaden their appeal, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, under still-newish artistic director Alan Pierson, is on the front lines.

Matthew VanBesien

“We’re pedaling as fast as we can,” the New York Philharmonic’s still-newish executive director Matthew VanBesien told the Transom with a laugh, when asked how things had been going since he took over from Zarin Mehta last summer. “There’s a lot to do.”

It was a brutally cold January morning, and Mr. VanBesien and his orchestra colleagues—including radio host, board member and donor Alec Baldwin—were on hand for the Philharmonic’s announcement of its 2013-14 season at WQXR’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. His cycling metaphor might well have been replaced with the luge—or even the Nordic combined.

Perusing a list of planned soloists that included five violinists, three cellists and classical comedy sketch duo Igudesman & Joo, we formulated a complaint, or, rather, an observation. The viola, that oft-neglected and ridiculed member of the string family, had been left off entirely.

Mr. VanBesien laughed and gave a shout-out to the Philharmonic’s viola section and its principal, Cynthia Phelps. Then he pedaled right away.

As the space filled up, Mr. Baldwin shuffled through some papers. Meanwhile, across the room, the Transom spotted Charles Hamlen, the vice president for artists and programs at the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

Asked about cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s scheduled Nov. 1, 2012, appearance with the OSL, which was canceled in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Mr. Hamlen, former chairman of IMG Artists, explained that it had been rescheduled with cellist Steven Isserlis for June 1. He went on to note of Ms. Weilerstein, “I knew her parents before they knew each other.”

The Philharmonic’s chairman, Gary Parr—a deputy chairman at financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard Frères—then kicked the event off with a nod to one group that was conspicuously absent: the orchestra’s musicians.

“They are the New York Philharmonic, and they are so extraordinary, so exceptional,” he gushed. “They are, of course, at Avery Fisher Hall at this moment, rehearsing. As they should be.”

“We have some moments where we’re just going to have fun this year,” Mr. VanBesien promised. “And I think that’s a really good and healthy thing.”

This season will be music director Alan Gilbert’s fifth with the orchestra. Messrs. Gilbert and VanBesien were joined by artistic administrator Ed Yim, and there was quite a lot of talk of collaboration.

“Part of what the three of us do is keep a very open radar to what’s going on around us and what people whom we respect are interested in, and kind of take those ideas and try to work with them and make them a part of who we are,” Mr. Yim offered.

Highlights of the season will include artist-in-residence Yefim Bronfman’s performance of the complete cycle of Beethoven’s piano concertos. Mr. Bronfman wasn’t there; he was off in Dallas, likely in warmer weather, preparing to play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as part of its Mozart Festival.

Also on tap, and perhaps the biggest news garnered from venturing out in the cold, is the New York Philharmonic’s Inaugural Biennial—which will run from May 29 through June 7, 2014. Mr. Hamlen told the Transom that OSL is one of the Philharmonic’s partners for the biennial, which, he said, they’re “very excited about.”

Le Poème Harmonique.

Le Poème Harmonique
The Miller Theatre at Columbia University
September 12 and 14
The photogenic and ultra-talented French early music ensemble Le Poème Harmonique opens the Miller Theatre’s season with “Venezia”—candlelit, semi-staged performances of songs by Monteverdi, Manelli and others. Expect lots of period-appropriate drama, as the group, which focuses on 17th and 18th century music, interprets works like Ferrari’s “Chi non sà come amor” and madrigals by Monteverdi. Music director Vincent Dumestre leads a production that uses vocal ornamentation and historic gestures to bring to mind life in 17th century Venice during Carnival.

Piano Competition Finals
Paul Hall at the Juilliard School
September 21
The competition will be cut-throat and the tension high for the finals of this Juilliard piano competition. Open to the public, it will feature students performing Rachmaninov’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” with the winner returning to perform the work with the Juilliard Symphony Orchestra October 24, 2012. Rachmaninov composed and premiered his “Rhapsody” in 1934; it is a set of variations on Paganini’s 24th Caprice, and is perhaps best known for the sweeping 18th Variation. Russian-born Semyon Bychkov conducts the October concert, which will also feature Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 and Dutilleux’s “Metaboles.”

L’Elisir d’Amore
Metropolitan Opera House
September 24
One of Donizetti’s best-known and oft-performed operas opens the Met’s 2012/2013 season with a gala. L’Elisir d’Amore—The Elixir of Love—sees Russian star Anna Netrebko, who first worked in opera washing floors at the Mariinsky Theatre, in the role of Adina, the wealthy landowner who enchants Matthew Polenzani’s peasant Nemorino. The usual operatic trappings—shifting financial circumstances, a snake-oil salesman, and a military on the move—are all scored to a libretto by French playwright Eugène Scribe.

Sphinx Virtuosi at Carnegie Hall
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
October 9
Comprising alumni from the Sphinx Organization’s eponymous yearly string competition, this conductor-less chamber group makes yet another stop at Carnegie Hall. Sphinx was created in 1996 by Aaron Dworkin, later President Obama’s first appointee to the National Council on the Arts. The organization works to bring diversity to the arts, particularly among African-Americans and Latinos, and this concert features works by prominent African-American and Latino composers such as Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson and Alberto Ginastera. The group plays at an extremely high level, and it’s a great way to support diversity among string players, which is lacking, still, today.

London Symphony Orchestra
Avery Fisher Hall
October 22
Violinist James Ehnes, who performed the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto this summer as part of the New York Philharmonic’s Concerts in the Parks series, returns to New York to perform Brahms’s Violin Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra in this all-Brahms program. The Canadian violinist’s mind-boggling technical abilities, combined with his musicality, make him one of today’s strings stars and most in-demand soloists. Valery Gergiev conducts the program, which includes Brahms’s “Tragic Overture” and Symphony No. 2.

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
October 23
Yannick Nézet-Séguin makes his first appearance at Carnegie Hall as the orchestra’s music director in a performance of Verdi’s “Requiem,” with soloists Marina Poplavskaya, Christine Rice and others. The orchestra is the purveyor of that hard-to-describe Philadelphia Sound, but has also become the face of so many of the country’s similarly financially strapped performing arts institutions, and it was good news when it announced in late July its official emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The “Requiem,” first performed in 1874, on the anniversary of the death of one of Verdi’s friends, seems in opposition to the future the orchestra hopes to forge after a difficult reorganization.

The Tokyo String Quartet
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
October 28
The Tokyo String Quartet, on its farewell tour, plays works by Webern, Mozart and Mendelssohn at Zankel Hall as part of Yale in New York. After 44 years together in various iterations, the quartet has decided to call it quits, following the previously announced retirements of Kikuei Ikeda and Kazuhide Isomura—second violin and viola, respectively. The 2012-2013 season will be full of opportunities to celebrate the quartet, including concerts at New York’s 92nd Street Y. So dry your eyes and come bid adieu.

Orchestra of St. Luke’s
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
November 1
MacArthur Foundation Fellow Alisa Weilerstein performs Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 with Orchestra of St. Luke’s on this program, which also includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 in A Major, his “Chaconne from Idomeneo” and Haydn’s Symphony No. 99 in E-flat Major. Like several other New York-area orchestras, Orchestra of St. Luke’s has been at the forefront of branching out—through its educational programs and outreach and artistic programming—while still managing to pair with blockbuster artists like Ms. Weilerstein, herself a jewel.

Ensemble ACJW
Our Saviour’s Atonement Lutheran Church
178 Bennett Avenue, Manhattan
November 11
Launching a career as a young professional musician isn’t easy, even when you’re at the top of your game. Once every two years, the Academy—an invention of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and the Weill Music Institute—selects as many as 20 young musicians from around the world as fellows. Some past and current members of the Academy make their way into Ensemble ACJW. The Academy is run in partnership with the New York City Department of Education; its members teach in city schools. Ensemble ACJW brings high-caliber music to segments of the city that might not always be exposed to it. This concert, part of the Voices from Latin America festival, features music by Villa-Lobos, Piazzolla and Ana Lara.

The Cleveland Orchestra
Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
November 13
The Cleveland Orchestra, one of the original Big Five Orchestras, returns to New York with a performance of works by Beethoven and Scriabin. The program also includes the New York premiere of Matthias Pintscher’s “Chute d’etoiles” for two trumpets and orchestra. The beloved orchestra comes to New York probably about as often as Mr. Pintscher, who has made the city his home for several years but is often pulled away for other engagements.

The money is proceeds from Mr. Baldwin’s Capital One Bank commercials, and part of ongoing donations from money he's earned from those ads to his favorite cultural institutions. This has also involved synergy with Capital One Bank itself making donations, as described in a Wall Street Journal news item last year about the actor's philanthropic activities.

Alec Baldwin.

“I have loved classical music all of my life,” Mr. Baldwin said in a statement released by the orchestra. “Zarin Mehta made my dream of becoming part of the world of classical music come true. I will miss working with him directly, but will always bear in mind his passion, commitment and insight as I continue my work with the New York Philharmonic.”

Mr. Baldwin’s dream came true when he began hosting The New York Philharmonic This Week in 2009. He’s also a member of the New York Philharmonic board.

Executive director designate Matthew VanBesien called Mr. Baldwin’s work with the orchestra “one of Zarin Mehta’s great legacies.” He added that he personally looks forward to working with the actor and “welcoming him further in the fold of the New York Philharmonic.”

A spokesperson for the orchestra said that the gift, not his first, isn’t earmarked for any particular purpose. “It’s just general,” she said, “it’s not specified for any particular program.”