On most Sunday evenings in Washington, the National Gallery of Art hosts a free classical music concert series. The venue is, with some exceptions, the pretty if hyper-resonant West Garden Court in the West Building, an aesthetically pleasing location although there are not many good sight lines. The line-up is a mixture of local performers and bigger names, with the occasional visit by an extraordinary player or ensemble. The virtue of this series is that it is free, and you do not even need to reserve a ticket. If some Sunday evening you find yourself with nothing to do at 6:30 p.m., you can just walk in and find a seat.

This past Sunday evening, members of the New York Chamber Soloists (pictured) opened the series' winter season. The opening work on this concert, one of the Vivaldi double wind concerti, felt under-rehearsed, almost like an afterthought to the rest of the program. In fact, leaving it out would have spared the hassle of bringing in a harpsichord, used only for this work. It was a rough start, with too many infelicities of intonation (especially from the oboe) and rhythmic alignment. Still, it is a lovely piece of music, especially the third movement, an Allegro molto based on a repeated bass pattern.

The best playing came in the middle of the program, especially the pairing of flutist Jennifer Grim and clarinetist Allen Blustine on Elliot Carter's Esprit rude/Esprit doux. It is one of several birthday tributes that the soon-to-be 100-year-old Carter (born December 11, 1908, one day after Olivier Messiaen) has offered to Pierre Boulez, in this case for Boulez's 60th birthday, in 1985. The piece is a fascinating opposition of two voices, based on motifs taken from letters in Boulez's name and linguistic arcana relating to a phrase in Greek, incarnated by the two wind instruments, demanding a virtuosic control of range, dynamics, and attack.

The strings had their turn in the meatiest selection, Mozart's piano quartet in E-flat major (K. 493, 1786), played with gentle tempo choices in the first and third movements. The piano dominates much of the work, and the part's many demands were met ably by Elizabeth Metcalfe, helped along by the restraint of her colleagues. The second half opened with a curiosity, a Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs by Camille Saint-Saëns (op. 79, 1887). Featuring the three woodwinds and piano, it is a pretty enough but much too flowery piece. Not something that calls for repeated playing, but it was an interesting facet of this varied and worthy program, one of the chief assets of this concert.

The major failure was the concluding work, a recent commission from Gerald Fried (b. 1928), The Chess Game. It was premiered by the New York Chamber Soloists in 2006, as part of their regular appearance at the Vermont Mozart Festival. If you do not know Fried's music, think again: he composed scores for some of Stanley Kubrick's early movies, worked with Quincy Jones on the score of the mini-series Roots, and wrote music for TV shows like Gilligan's Island and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He has been quoted as saying, "If music can stand up in the concert hall, it's probably too complicated for film." The reverse is also true and was sadly proved by this piece, a series of oh-so-whimsical vignettes based on Alice in Wonderland. If a work has spoken narration over the music, as this did, it probably means that the music, as in a film, is of secondary importance.

The next several weeks of the free concert series at the National Gallery of Art are going to be good. Three string quartets will give concerts, including the Vilnius String Quartet (January 13) and the Hugo Wolf Quartet (February 3), leading up to the return to Washington of the much-missed Juilliard String Quartet (February 17). Pianist Jeni Slotchiver will give a recital (January 20), and the Central Bucks County High School West Chamber Choir will offer a challenging and intriguing program of modern music, rather unusual for such a young ensemble (January 27). Along with the Juilliard Quartet, another high point will be the Orchestra of New Spain, playing a program of 18th-century Spanish music (February 10). All concerts begin at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday evening, are free, and require no planning to attend. For important events, it is a good idea to arrive early, to be assured of a good seat and, in rare cases, of any seat at all. Enter the West Building through the Constitution Ave. entrance, at Sixth St. NW. Seating begins at 6 p.m. If you have trouble remembering about this series and want a weekly reminder, sign up for their e-mail newsletter.