Classical Music Agenda
Yes, it is the weekend after Labor Day, and that means that your Classical Music Agenda has come back from its summer hiatus, tanned, rested, and ready. The classical music season is not yet fully under way -- but some good music is waiting to be heard, including some of it for free, which is where we begin.
MAKE IT FREE:
Lawrence Brownlee, tenor
OPERA:
>> Washington National Opera opened its new season last night with a production of Rossini's Barber of Seville. Opera aficionados have probably already seen this perennial favorite far too many times, but it is always a good choice for a new listener's first opera. The company is reviving David Gately's fairly traditional production, which will offer few surprises -- that could be either a positive or a negative, depending on your point of view. Some promising young singers are in the first cast, especially tenor Lawrence Brownlee -- who excels in this kind of bel canto repertoire -- and bass-baritone Eric Owens. The options include various times and two different casts in various combinations almost every day this week (September 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, and 20) in the Kennedy Center Opera House.
ALSO:
>> If you are most interested in music by living composers, you should become a regular at the series of concerts played by the VERGE Ensemble at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which gets under way this afternoon (September 13, 4 p.m.). The program includes Somei Satoh's Birds in Warped Time II for violin and piano and the Washington premiere of Paul Moravec's Passacaglia.
>> If you live in the Montgomery County suburbs, the concert series at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville is a good option. It opens its season tonight with a recital by the fine pianist Joyce Yang, who won the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition's silver medal when she was 19. She will play music by Chopin, Schumann, and Rachmaninoff (September 13, 7:30 p.m.).
>> For chamber music, it is hard to beat the program on offer from the Calder String Quartet next Sunday (September 20, 3 p.m.) at College Park's Clarice Smith Center. Leoš Janáček's second string quartet, known as "Intimate Letters," will be paired with pieces by Stravinsky and Schubert. Hang around after the performance for an informal "talk back" session with the Calder Quartet and ask the question you have always wanted to have classical music's hippest string quartet answer. They will be back in the area later in the month, as part of their genre-bending tour with bloody-mouthed rocker Andrew W. K., at the Sixth and I Synagogue (September 30, 8 p.m.).