Whatever else you might say about the Boston music scene, it certainly produces its share of durable relationships. Ozawa’s 29 years with the Boston Symphony Orchestra is only the most prominent example; there’s also Benjamin Zander with the Boston Philharmonic and Craig Smith with Emmanuel Music, partnerships that reach beyond the 20-year mark.

We can now add David Hoose and the Cantata Singers to the list. When the group was formed, in the 1960s, its mission was the performance of the then-neglected Bach cantatas. (Ah, how times change.) This season Hoose celebrates 20 productive years with the chorus, which along the way has gone from a niche group to one of Boston’s finest vocal ensembles — no mean feat in this town.

It’s been a remarkable journey, but Hoose insists that the biggest change has happened to him, not to the ensemble. "I didn’t come to this group with a lot of choral experience. I had composed some choral music, but I hadn’t really thought much about the relation between text and music, and the way they interact. So, having confronted this great body of repertoire for the last 20 years, I’ve really changed more than the group has."

What he’s realized during the intervening two decades is the power choral music has to reach an audience, to alter it in some fundamental way. This is a dimension of the music that the group takes seriously. Cantata Singers concerts are distinguished not only by high-quality musicianship but also by a concern with the text and the ideas within it. In that respect, says Hoose, the group hasn’t changed a bit.

Nevertheless, some things have changed he took over in 1982. The repertoire now stretches from the 17th century to the present, including six words that the group has commissioned and premiered. For Hoose, the challenge isn’t simply doing new music but finding new music that address the same profound issues as the great classics of the repertoire. "We’ve been fortunate enough to be able to commission some really large works, works that really say something about the human condition." And juxtaposing new and old on the same program, as they often do, works to the advantage of both. "Contemporary works give the great issues music tackles a contemporary slant rather than just a historical one. And if an audience has a certain comfort level with Mozart, than that allows them to open themselves up to new sounds. Each brings the other to life."

There’s no contemporary music on this season’s program, though they will perform Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine in March. The season is bookended by a great work at either end: Haydn’s Die Schöpfung/The Creation next Friday and Sunday, November 8 and 10, and Bach’s B-minor Mass in May. The Haydn, which Hoose conducted during his first season, will have Janet Brown as Gabriel, Charles Blandy as Uriel, Mark Andrew Cleveland as Raphael, Karl Ryczyk as Eve, and Mark McSweeney as Adam. (Performances are at Jordan Hall next Friday at 8 p.m., with a pre-performance talk by Craig Smith at 6:45, and next Sunday at 3 p.m., with Smith holding forth at 1:45; call 617-267-6502.) It’s one of his favorite works — and why not? It’s easily the greatest oratorio written after Bach. Among its marvels are some magnificent tone painting, a dissonant overture whose harmony was years ahead of its time, and a choral outburst at the creation of light that Stephen Jay Gould once called "the greatest C-major chord in the history of music."

Yet for Hoose it’s The Creation’s deeper issues that loom largest for him: "It combines a youthful freshness with a very wise understanding of humanity. It is about God, but it’s also about the life that we find around us, in nature and in ourselves. It transcends religious questions, and that’s part of what makes it the masterpiece that it is."

The old with the new. Next up on Boston Lyric Opera’s card is Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail/The Abduction from the Seraglio, in which he injected some Turkish fervor (which was all the rage at the time) into his graceful musical language. It opens at the Shubert this Wednesday and runs through November 19; call (800) 447-7400. Also on Wednesday, NEC pianist Stephen Drury has the daunting task of playing all of Liszt’s Transcendental Études, and throws in a new work by composer Linda Dusman for good measure. That’s at 8 p.m. at Jordan Hall, and it’s free. Finally, the Juilliard Quartet, still America’s most storied foursome, plays the Boston premiere of Gunther Schuller’s Fourth Quartet, framed by works of Mozart and Beethoven. It’s part of the FleetBoston Celebrity Series, on November 9 at 8 p.m. at Jordan Hall; call (617) 482-6661.