Olivier Latry and Other Musical Visitors
With apologies for skipping the Easter edition of the Classical Music Agenda, here are a few suggestions of ways to divert your ears this weekend. One of the best organists in the world at the moment, Olivier Latry from the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, will be in town this weekend. He will perform, in an annual tradition on the Octave of Easter, at the Great Gallery Organ of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (4th St. and Michigan Ave. NE) during two appearances on Sunday (April 19): during the noon Mass and at a 6 p.m. concert, both in the Great Upper Church and both free and open to the public. The most exciting part of Latry's performances is to hear him improvise at the organ, a skill at which he is an acknowledged master. The video embedded below gives you a taste of one of his previous improvisations, at a 1996 concert at St. Patrick's Church here in Washington.
>> Violinist Leonidas Kavakos's performances in the area are always worth hearing. He will be playing two of the Big Five Romantic violin concertos this week with the National Symphony Orchestra this week—not on the same night—the Mendelssohn (April 16 and 18) and the Tchaikovsky (April 17). Iván Fischer will conduct, in a program that also features Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony and a new work by Colorado composer Daniel Kellogg.
>> Your Friday night (April 17, 7:30 p.m.) could include a recital by soprano Felicity Lott and pianist Graham Johnson, presented by the Vocal Arts Society at the Embassy of Austria. This new program of mostly French song, Lott's specialty, will likely be as charming as the one she gave last year in the same venue.
>> If cash flow is an issue, another excellent free concert is the one at the Library of Congress on Saturday (April 18, 8 p.m.) featuring the Quatuor Mosaïques, a fine and unusual string quartet. Made up of musicians from the early music group Concentus Musicus, the quartet's specialty is playing the great string quartets of the Classical period on historical instruments. This program includes two Haydn quartets (op. 20/3 and op. 77/2) and Beethoven's C minor quartet (op. 18/4). If you do not have reserved tickets in advance, show up early to the Coolidge Auditorium for an unused seat. I have never been unable to hear a concert at the Library of Congress using that method.
>> For you choral music geeks, the National Gallery of Art is sponsoring a Choral Festival this weekend, with free concerts by choirs from around the United States in the East Garden Court of the museum's West Building (April 17 to 19, 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.). No reservations or planning required.
>> If you feel like a little free opera, members of the Washington National Opera's Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program will perform a concert of American opera scenes on Saturday afternoon (April 18, 2 p.m.) in the Kogod Courtyard of the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (8th and F St. NW).