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George Frideric Handel’s Messiah was an instant classic soon after its 1742 premiere and has been a holiday tradition around the world ever since. Through a dramatic series of arias, recitatives, and choruses, Handel offers a musical meditation on Christ’s birth, life, and resurrection—and his message of redemption. Jane Glover leads the SF Symphony and Chorus in this perennial favorite.

Violinist Randall Goosby returns to the San Francisco Symphony for an Edward Gardner–led program featuring Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto. Although Bruch lived to be 82 and produced an impressive catalogue of music, he never wrote anything as enduringly popular as his First Violin Concerto. It was an immediate hit, interspersing Hungarian-spiced licks with plenty of crowd-pleasing passagework. Gustav Holst had many esoteric interests, including astrology. The seven movements of The Planets, his best-known composition, range from the brutal rhythms and spooky effects of “Mars, the Bringer of War” to the dissonance and tolling bells of “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age,” and the closer, “Neptune, the Mystic,” which calls to mind an Impressionist painting of outer space.

Conductor Manfred Honeck presents his theatrical interpretation of Mozart’s magisterial swan song, literally composed on his deathbed. Honeck’s illuminating selection of dramatic readings, choral interpolations, and other enhancements bring new insights to the score. Also on the program is Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 93, written during the composer’s triumphant late-career stay in London. Haydn had never traveled outside his native Austria, but he took to his growing international fame like a natural. Who knows? Symphony No. 93 might inspire you to launch your own second act.

Canadian maestro Bernard Labadie, one of the leading interpreters of the Baroque and Classical repertoire, conducts the first-ever SF Symphony performances of Bach’s Easter Oratorio, a spectacular celebration of Christ’s resurrection. Bach was a devout Lutheran, but he wrote music for real human beings, not musical sermons for potential saints. Who wouldn’t feel the grief of a mother who has lost her son, the sorrow of his devoted disciples, or the anguish of one who found redemption in his love? And who wouldn’t share in their exultation when he returns? Bach’s vivid Magnificat depicts Mary’s response to the news that she will bear the son of God. Although the score calls for large forces by Bach’s standards, the magnificence of the Magnificat never supplants the mystery.

Lights, Camera, Music!: Watch favorite films on the big screen at Davies Symphony Hall as the scores are performed live by the SF Symphony. Rated PG-13

Beethoven wanted his Ninth Symphony—led here by James Gaffigan—to enact a journey of transformation, exploring themes of struggle and salvation, community and compassion. Although he wasn’t religious in the conventional sense, he found spiritual sustenance in his art. Even in our hyperpolarized times, Beethoven’s Ninth feels like a unifying force across the globe, a cultural common good. For its creator, who drafted, revised, and perfected his final symphony over more than 30 years, its meaning was urgent, immediate, vital: In those decades he saw the humanist ideals of the French Revolution trampled by repressive regimes.