Beethoven’s Fidelio, like his Ninth Symphony, is a triumphal ode to freedom and love. This production does the piece proud.

Fidelio. By Ludwig van Beethoven; directed by Robert Driver. Opera Company of Philadelphia production through October 24, 2008 at Academy of Music, Broad and Locust Sts. (215) 732-8400 or www.operaphilly.com.

For its production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, the Opera Company of Philadelphia spent $2 million on towering sets and costumes by the sculptor Jun Kaneko. The result is a succession of visually disconcerting images that overwhelmed a great opera and some excellent voices.

Fidelio. By Ludwig van Beethoven; directed by Robert Driver. Opera Company of Philadelphia production through October 24, 2008 at Academy of Music, Broad and Locust Sts. (215) 732-8400 or www.operaphilly.com.

Astral Artists protégé cellist Susan Babini will give her Philadelphia solo debut on Sunday Oct 19th at the Trinity Center for Urban Life. If Pablo Casals or Jacqueline DuPré had selected this program, the concert would have sold out months in advance.

Susan Babini: Solo Cello Debut Concert. Presented by Astral Artists October 19, 2008 at Trinity Center for Urban life, 2212 Spruce St. (215) 735-6699 or www.astralartists.org.

George Crumb is one of the most outlandish living American composers and one of the most accessible, because you know he always has a reason for the things he does. At 80, he applied his inventiveness to ten American classics.

Orchestra 2001. Crumb, Voices from the Morning of the Earth; Vigue, Tides; Schwantner, Distant Runes and Incantations. Ann Crumb, soprano; Randall Scarlata, baritone; Marcantonio Barone, piano; William Kerrigan, Susan Jones, David Nelson, Angela Nelson, percussion. James Freeman, conductor. October 3, 2008 at Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center. (610) 544-6610 or www.orchestra2001.org.

The Tempesta di Mare Baroque Orchestra artfully showcased the musical culture of an 18th-Century city governed by businessmen.

Orchestra Music from Hamburg: Tempesta di Mare Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra. Emlyn Ngai, concertmaster; Gwyn Roberts, flute. October 4, 2008 at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church. (215) 755-8776 or www.tempestadimare.org.

Lorin Maazel’s tenure at the New York Philharmonic may be winding down, but Friday’s all-Tchaikovsky program displayed his expressiveness and emotionalism as well as his cultivation of beautiful sound.

New York Philharmonic: All-Tchaikovsky program. Lorin Maazel, conductor. October 3, 2008 at Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center. (215) 893-1999 or www.kimmelcenter.org.

The Lyric Fest song series opened its season with a portrait of Gustav Mahler, consisting of letters, music and songs assembled by performers who've spent a significant portion of their careers mastering his work.

Our music critic confronted a painful choice: The concert hall or the ballpark? Then Jimmy Rollins solved the dilemma for him.

In Part 9 of his series on sonata-form, Dan Coren discusses one of the most sophisticated devices available in the toolkit of classical harmony: “For me, hearing a dominant seventh become an augmented sixth is one of the miracles of the natural world, something akin to seeing a chameleon change color.”

The young pianist Simone Dinnerstein makes a practice of playing complicated works and making them look easy.