Scott Cantrell

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is off to wine country.

On two flights today, via airports in Oakland and Sacramento, the orchestra is heading to California's Napa Valley to make its debut at the 3-year-old Festival del Sole.

As it happens, Jaap van Zweden will make his official debut as the DSO's music director not in Dallas but in the Lincoln Theater in Yountville, Calif. At 6:30 p.m. Friday he'll conduct the orchestra in Beethoven's Fidelio Overture, Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. (The Beethoven overture replaces the originally scheduled Prokofiev First Violin Concerto, which was canceled when violinist Dmitri Sitkovetsky suffered an injury.) At 3 p.m. Sunday, Mr. van Zweden and the DSO will close the two-week festival with an all-Mahler program: the Rückert Lieder, with mezzo Jill Grove, and the Fifth Symphony.

But don't worry if you're not on your way to the land of sumptuous cabernets. WRR-FM (101.1) will broadcast the Friday concert live at 8:30 p.m. Dallas time. The Mahler Fifth will be repeated in Dallas on the DSO's Sept. 10 gala and the Sept. 11-14 season-opening classical concerts.

"It's good that we can start already to build on the Mahler," Mr. van Zweden says. "That's the reason I wanted to play it in Napa, so we can get used to each other in Mahler."

The Lincoln Theater is on the grounds of the California Veterans Home in Yountville, said to be the largest such facility in the U.S. Originally built in the 1950s, the 1,200-seat theater was enlarged and modernized in 2004.

"It's a decent indoor hall in a lovely setting," says Mark Melson, the DSO's vice president of artistic operations. "Big artists go there, the artistic standards are high and there are lots of extracurricular activities. We determined it was the kind of festival we'd like to participate in."

The Dallas-Napa connection is Dallas entrepreneur Barrett Wissman, a former DSO board member who several years ago bought IMG Artists, one of the leading international managements for classical musicians. The firm represents a veritable who's who including pianists Evgeny Kissin and Lang Lang, violinists Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell, and conductors Maris Jansons, Claus Peter Flor, Andrew Litton and, yes, Mr. van Zweden.

The Napa festival is an outgrowth of one Mr. Wissman and his wife, cellist Nina Kotova, started just five years ago in Cortona, Italy.

The idea of doing something similar in Napa Valley came from Richard Walker, an attorney who represented one of IMG's orchestras, the Russian National. He became co-founder and co-director of the California franchise, which was dubbed the Festival del Sole – festival of the sun.

"Napa has a very strong identity with the wine industry," Mr. Wissman says of the area just over an hour's drive from San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento. "But there was almost nothing culturally."

As in Italy, the Napa festival, inaugurated in 2006, is a feast of dining and drinking as well as music. The area wineries have become active supporters, and some events are even held at the wineries. Festive dinners are scheduled after both DSO concerts.

Having lost its summer residency at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado two years ago, the DSO was in the market for another summer outlet. Mr. Wissman suggested the Festival del Sole, and details were worked out with the DSO's former CEO, Fred Bronstein.

Whether this will be a one-time thing or a continuing relationship will probably depend on the next CEO, who's likely to be announced in the weeks to follow. Meanwhile, the Vail festival has announced that the DSO will return to its lineup next summer, with Mr. van Zweden conducting.

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