Classical Music Agenda
Something big is happening early in the week that seems to have canceled all of the classical music concerts. Good music awaits closer to the weekend, and here are some suggestions.
Yundi Li, pianist
>> After a strong performance by Leif Ove Andsnes last week, another leading pianist, Yundi Li, joins the National Symphony Orchestra this week (January 22 to 24), playing the Ravel G major concerto. Emmanuel Krivine will take his turn at this season's revolving-door podium, also leading Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. How can you not love a work in which you hear musical depictions of the composer's opium-induced hallucination about being marched to the scaffold, being executed at the guillotine, and a coven of witches celebrating the damnation of his soul?
>> French pianist François-Frédéric Guy was going to perform a complete cycle of the Beethoven sonatas at La Maison Française this month. The inauguration and other scheduling conflicts mean that he will only give one concert, with some music by Beethoven and Schubert (January 22, 7:30 p.m.), but it should be good.
>> The wild card is 20-something Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin, who gives a blockbuster recital sponsored by WPAS in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater (January 24, 2 p.m.). The program includes two Haydn sonatas, as well as daring works by Medtner and Ravel.
>> Violist Roger Tapping will join the Triple Helix Piano Trio on Sunday (January 25, 4 p.m.) at the Corcoran Gallery of Art for a mostly contemporary program. Along with some Mozart and Shostakovich, the group will play a piano trio by Babadjanian and the Washington premiere of Harbison's Abu Ghraib, from 2006.
THE FREE KIND:
>> For a free piano recital, or almost, go to the Phillips Collection on Sunday (January 25, 4 p.m.) to hear pianist Christine Johnson. As always, the concert is part of the price of admission to the museum.
>> At the National Gallery of Art on Sunday (January 25, 6:30 p.m.) the Fine Arts Quartet will continue the celebration of the Mendelssohn bicentenary with a program of the Mendelssohn string quartets. Enter the West Building through the Constitution Ave. entrance, at 6th St. NW.
FURTHERMORE:
>> The Russian Chamber Art Society will present excerpts from Russian fairy tale operas (January 22, 7:30 p.m.) at the Austrian Embassy.
>> Carlos Kalmar will conduct the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Thursday, with Katherine Needleman playing Martinů's oboe concerto, in the Music Center at Strathmore (January 22, 8 p.m.).
>> A trip to Baltimore would be worth the effort to hear soprano Tony Arnold and violinist Movses Pogossian give a performance of Kurtág's Kafka-Fragments at An die Musik LIVE! (January 22, 8 p.m.).
>> Hear a recital by members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists program at Washington National Opera, conducted by none other than Plácido Domingo in the Music Center at Strathmore on Sunday (January 25, 4 p.m.).
>> Also on Sunday (January 25, 7:30 p.m.) violinist Augustin Hadelich and pianist Rohan De Silva will give a recital in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.