Classical Music Agenda
Cellist Alisa Weilerstein
WE LIKE FREE:
>> The Washington Bach Consort hosts a Noontime Cantata Series, with free concerts of Bach cantatas and organ music on the first Tuesday of the month. Take your lunchtime break and have a quiet moment this Tuesday (October 6, 12:10 p.m.) with Bach's Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee, BWV 18, at the Church of the Epiphany (1317 G St. NW).
>> On Wednesdays this month, the National Gallery of Art is hosting a free noontime concert series beginning this Wednesday (October 7, 12:10 p.m.) with the National Gallery Wind Quintet playing music of Debussy, Taffanel, and others. Go to the lecture hall on the ground floor of the museum's West Building.
>> The church of St. John's, Lafayette Square (16th and H St. NW), is starting a new concert series (.PDF file) on Wednesdays. Their new organist, Michael Lodico, will open it this Wednesday (October 7, 12:10 p.m.).
>> The free concert series at the Library of Congress gets under way this week, with a performance by the Regev-Huang-Weilerstein Trio on Friday (October 9, 8 p.m.). The program will feature the alluring Alisa Weilerstein playing Mendelssohn's first cello sonata, as well as Mendelssohn's first piano trio and John Adams's Road Movies. Tickets for reserved seats are already all spoken for, but if you arrive early (at the First St. entrance of the Jefferson Building) you have a very good chance of getting a stand-by seat.
>> On Sunday (October 11, 3 p.m.) the Left Bank Concert Society will play a program of music by Kurtág, Koston, Bartók, and von Dohnányi to open the Steinway Series of free concerts at the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (8th and F St. NW). Free tickets are distributed at the G St. entrance of the museum starting one hour before the concert.
>> The concert included with the price of admission to the Phillips Collection this Sunday (October 11, 4 p.m.) will feature flutist Anastasia Petanova and pianist Timothy Hoft.
>> The Choral Arts Society of Washington will perform music of Spanish composers this Sunday (October 11, 6:30 p.m.), with Norman Scribner conducting and Douglas Riva at the piano, at the National Gallery of Art. Enter through the entrance at Constitution Ave. and 6th St. NW, and early arrival is recommended for a good seat.
>> Mezzo-soprano Delores Ziegler will perform John Greer's The House of Tomorrow, a setting of texts from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, with the composer at the piano on Sunday night (October 11, 7 p.m.) at College Park's Clarice Smith Center.
>> If you are out in Fairfax, a piano trio of George Mason University faculty members Anna Balakerskaia, Zino Bogacheck, and David Teie will perform a free recital at the university's Center for the Arts on Sunday evening (October 11, 7 p.m.).
NOT FREE BUT RECOMMENDED:
>> The Young Concert Artists Series always brings promising new musicians to the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, and the next one is violinist Hahn-Bin, who will play with pianist John Blacklow on Monday night (October 5, 7:30 p.m.).
>> The soloist playing with the National Symphony Orchestra this week will be well worth hearing, pianist Nelson Freire playing the first Brahms piano concerto. Guest conductor Ludovic Morlot will also lead two interesting tone poems, Martinů's Frescoes of Piero della Francesca and Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini (October 8, 10, 11, various times), at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.
>> String players from the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields chamber orchestra will give a concert of music for sextet and octet by Brahms, Shostakovich, and Mendelssohn on Friday (October 9, 8 p.m.) at the Clarice Smith Center in College Park. Find out more about the music at a pre-performance lecture, or stay after the concert for a Talk Back and a Meet and Greet with the artists.
>> One of the greatest comic operas ever composed, Verdi's Falstaff, is the next production from Washington National Opera, opening on Saturday night (October 10, 7 p.m.) at the Kennedy Center Opera House. Other performances this week are scheduled for Monday (October 12) and Saturday (October 17), also both at 7 p.m.
>> For more concert information, go to Ionarts.