Sometimes, conducting modern music is like driving a car that was designed with 12 wheels, but such that only one can touch the ground at any time. Some kind of tricky balancing act, it gets you somewhere but tensely, with your muscles clenched. And then, the Dvorak New World Symphony is like stepping off that contraption into a mercedes convertible, lifting the top down, stepping on the pedal, and wham, there comes the acceleration pushing you into the plush leather, the wind blowing on your face and the rush of blood to your groin: just plain exhilaration. The snobs will sneer at the bourgeois pleasures, but they're so thoroughly enjoyable. The Summer Series of the SF Symphony is all about giving the audience such easy satisfaction. The program we attended, in addition to the New World Symphony, included a Beethoven piano concerto No. 5, and a Slavonic Dance, again by Dvorak. Easy pleasures don't mean it's dumbed down: those are famous pieces for sure, and no feather will be ruffled the wrong way by the program, but these are still important works, and highly difficult to perform....

In our inbox, we found all these convincing reasons to attend the performance of Beethoven's 9th symphony of the Symphony Parnassus tomorrow night: Our conductor and Music Director is Stephen Paulson, who by day is the San Francisco Symphony's principal bassoonist; Anyway, Symphony Parnassus rocks, we're a well-kept secret in the local performing arts community, and our goal is to let the secret out. Plus, you haven't lived until you've experienced the B9 live....

Leif-Ove Andsnes should just stop traveling and move here. Looking back only a few years, we see a 2004 performance here with Ian Bostridge, a 2005 concert of a Rachmaninoff piano concerto with MTT/SFS, a solo recital in 2006. He'll be here on Sunday for a recital at Davies and again for the Brahms piano concerto No. 2 next month. Admit it, L.O., you like us, you can't live without us. In fact, we forced......