I’m not sure why, but there are usually more exciting concerts in the spring than in the fall. At the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for example, we have not only Seiji Ozawa’s three final programs as music director, including the Dvǒrak Cello Concerto, with Mstislav Rostropovich (April 4-6), and Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (April 18-20), but also James Levine’s first BSO concerts as music director designate (February 21-23). Levine finally announced a program — more Koussevitzky than Ozawa in its commitment to living composers — that makes up in variety (Dvǒrak, Ligeti, Mozart, Wuorinen, Schumann) what it might lack in coherence. The fabulous Ida Haendel will play the Bruch Violin Concerto under assistant conductor Ilan Volkov (January 31 and February 1, 2, and 5). And the BSO has a hot line-up of guest conductors: Daniele Gatti (February 7-9), David Robertson (February 14-16 and 19), Ingo Metzmacher (February 28 and March 1, 2, and 5), Hans Graf (March 7-9 and 12), and Rafael FrŸhbeck de Burgos leading Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve (March 28-30 and April 2).

We won’t have long to wait for some of the best concerts. James Bolle celebrates his 70th birthday and 35 years as director of Monadnock Music with the first complete American performance of Elliott Carter’s Symphonia (the Chicago and Cleveland Orchestras have played only single movements) and the Boston debut of the remarkable young Russian pianist Konstantin Lifschitz, in the Brahms First Piano Concerto (Sanders Theatre, January 11).

Next night, our own Russell Sherman joins Craig Smith’s Emmanuel Music for a FleetBoston Celebrity Series/Boston Marquee Mozart Birthday Concert (Jordan Hall, January 12). Twenty years ago, Smith was joined by Peter Sellars as they collaborated on their first staged Handel oratorio, the magnificent Saul (think power struggle in the Middle East). It’s back — sans staging — on Smith’s spring agenda (Emmanuel Church, April 27).

Another important revival is the late Donald Sur’s powerful Slavery Documents, which he composed for David Hoose and the Cantata Singers. They’re doing it again on a program with the world premiere of former Boston composer T.J. Anderson’s Slavery Documents 2 (Jordan Hall, March 17). A later Cantata Singers program will include three of its favorite composers: Bach, Schutz, and John Harbison (May 10).

The opera schedule remains skimpy. Boston Lyric Opera brings us Donizetti’s most touching comedy, Don Pasquale, in Boston’s first professional production of the piece since the Sarah Caldwell era (Shubert Theatre, March 27–April 9). The Lyric did the only La boheme I ever saw that ruined the foolproof ending; maybe this time it will come out right (May 1-7). The Puccini I’m most looking forward to is Boston Academy of Music’s La fanciulla del West ("The Girl of the Golden West"), a rip-roaring Western melodrama — in Italian — with some of Puccini’s least-known (except for the one Andrew Lloyd Webber ripped off) tunes (Emerson Majestic, March 8, 10, and 12).

Our imported delicacies are usually supplied by the Celebrity Series. We’re getting an especially tasty line-up of singers: Dame Kiri te Kanawa (Symphony Hall, February 24); eloquent baritone Thomas Quasthoff (Jordan Hall, March 8); Wagnerian tenor Ben Heppner (Jordan Hall, February 8); and the scrumptious Barbara Cook, in a "Mostly Sondheim" evening (Symphony Hall, April 26). Versatile mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter will sing Baroque arias with Les Musiciens du Louvre (Jordan Hall, April 7).

Under the baton of its outgoing music director, Christoph von Dohnanyi, the Cleveland Orchestra (America’s best?) will pit two modern masters, Witold Lutoslawski and Jakob Rihm (a work that includes the Emerson String Quartet), against the most exhilarating of Beethoven’s symphonies, the Seventh (January 23). On the chamber-music front, pianist Peter Serkin and violinist Pamela Frank are doing Bach sonatas and recent works by Peter Lieberson and Alexander Goehr (Jordan Hall, April 12), and the Takacs String Quartet offers a fascinating combination of music and poems read by former poet laureate Robert Pinsky (Jordan Hall, April 19). Heading the list of piano recitals is Maurizio Pollini’s (Symphony Hall, April 28).

Look for excellent chamber music in particularly lovely chambers: Sarasa at the Friends’ Meeting House in Cambridge (February 16); Winsor Music at the octagonal Follen Church in Lexington (April 20); Triple Helix at Harvard’s Houghton Library (January 24); the Borromeo Quartet at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (March 24). And no one should miss Mahler maven Benjamin Zander’s Mahler Ninth with the Boston Philharmonic (Sanders Theatre and Jordan Hall, February 21, 23, and 24), Susan Davenny Wyner leading the New England String Ensemble (Sanders Theatre, January 13), or Gil Rose’s Boston Modern Orchestra Project (free concert in Jordan Hall, January 19).