In concertos, unlike in opera, soloists don’t get to fidget out of sight until it’s time for that all-important entrance. Far more often than not, they must chill front and center as the orchestra takes forever setting out the exposition. That “forever” is subjective, of course; measured by the clock, the intros to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and the piano concertos of Chopin take several minutes apiece, which in this context is objectively a long time. Epitomizing the opposite approach, Felix Mendelssohn’s sublime Violin Concerto in E minor, op. 64, has the soloist on the wing in a heartbeat. For Hilary Hahn, now 46, the moody, urgent opening melody and the half-hour magic-carpet ride that follows have been a specialty since her teens; Sony Classical released her critically acclaimed recording with Hugh Wolff and the Oslo Philharmonic nearly a quarter century ago. Her reprise of this particular masterpiece under the baton of Giancarlo Guerrero at the San Francisco Symphony’s opening night gala thus feels highly propitious—a promise of instant liftoff for a thrilling season. But you know that line about the left hand and the right? The week before the “opening gala,” David Afkham conducts an early-bird special culminating in the Piano Concerto No. 1 of Brahms with the eminently gala-worthy Garrick Ohlsson in the hot seat for that epic orchestral preamble (September 18, 19). That’s not the only scheduling irony. As widely reported, San Francisco’s last music director Esa-Pekka Salonen skipped out early, leaving the players rudderless for now. His designated successor Elim Chan, who takes over next year, drops in for a potpourri program that includes—really?!—the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with Hahn’s estimable colleague Renaud Capuçon doing soloist honors (October 29 to 31). —Matthew Gurewitsch