At this point in December, holiday concerts and Handel's Messiah have completely hijacked the classical music schedule. Here are a few other events, not all of which avoid the spirit of the season. After this post, the Classical Music Agenda will take its end-of-the-year hiatus, to return in the New Year. >> On Tuesday, the final concert sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society this calendar year features young violist Jennifer Stumm and Finghin Collins at......

As highlighted in this week's Classical Music Agenda, the newly appointed music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Maestra Marin Alsop, is the first woman to take the helm of a major American orchestra. Tonight in the Music Center at Strathmore, she will lead the BSO in a program that features Fearful Symmetries by American composer John Adams. Last night, Marin Alsop sat down with John Adams at the quirky alternative venue known as Baltimore......

>> The Classical Music Agenda will return this Sunday, after hibernating all summer, but there are already a few developments to note this week in local classical news. Robert Shafer is a legend in the local choral music scene, as the long-standing director of the Oratorio Society of Washington, known in recent years as the Washington Chorus. Shafer's particular gift is to inspire a huge group — some 200 singers, none (or few) of them......

Everyone needs a vacation, even musicians, and the summer is quite naturally a time that the classical music world slows down. So this is it for your Classical Music Agenda, until August. This week's installment will be a little longer than normal, because there are several interesting things happening over the next couple months. If you want to hear some music this summer, you can, and here's where. HEADLINES: >> The most important classical music......

Memorial Day has come and gone, and we are now officially in the summer hiatus of the Classical Music Agenda. Here are some highlights for this week: in a week or two, this feature will take a well-deserved rest until Labor Day, when the classical concert schedule returns to full power. TOPS THIS WEEK: >> On Wednesday night, the excellent NPR radio program From the Top will be recorded in front of a live audience......

Summer is almost here, and that means it is almost time to roll up the carpets and send the Classical Music Agenda on vacation. So enjoy the music while you can. In particular, this is the last week to take in a performance of the best production from Washington National Opera this season, Janáček's Jenůfa. My review called this opera "essential viewing for anyone who cares about music drama." Performances remain only on Monday (May......

They have a saying in Paris that describes the fast pace of life in that city: Métro, boulot, dodo, meaning that life consists only of an endless repetition of subway rides, work, and sleep. Life in Washington is harried, too, but sometimes you need to stop as you dash through the L'Enfant Plaza station at rush hour on a Friday in January. Who is playing the famous Chaconne from Bach's D minor partita so well......

Last week's Classical Music Agenda omitted an excellent concert opportunity that just came to my attention, annual concerts of Schubert's music called Schubert, Schubert, and Schubert. The final installment is this evening (March 18, 8 p.m.), at Georgetown University's Gaston Hall (37th and O St. NW), when the Auryn String Quartet will play Schubert's Quartetsatz, D. 703, and the "Death and the Maiden" quartet, D. 810. Pianist Kyoko Hashimoto will also play the four Schubert......

At this point in December, people looking to hear a concert are probably only looking for a performance of Handel's Messiah or Holiday Concerts, and we have already dealt with both of those. Since there is not much else to mention, this will be your Classical Music Agenda until the New Year. There are a few things to hear, so hang in there. We will be back on January 7. >> The year's final free......

After several feverish weeks of wall-to-wall concerts, the approach of Thanksgiving puts the Classical Music Agenda into a temporary lull this week. Not to worry: we have some concerts for you even this week, and next week we will come back out swinging. LA MUTTER: >> We mentioned this on Thursday, but it really is the main event of the week. Anne-Sophie Mutter, one of the leading violinists on the world stage, will give a......

With a jam-packed weekend in the city that saw the dedication of the Air Force Memorial by the president as well as festive activities for Howard's homecoming and a crushing loss by the Skins, there doesn't seem to be too terribly much on the local news radar. But let's check it out. Gallaudet to Reopen: Despite the fact that over 100 students (133 to be exact) were arrested in continued protests on the school's campus......

On Tuesday, American composer Steve Reich turned 70, as mentioned in last week's Classical Music Agenda. While New Yorkers are enjoying a month-long festival of performances of Reich's music, here in Washington there was only one opportunity, a concert Saturday night by the recently formed Great Noise Ensemble at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Silver Spring. The Great Noise Ensemble may have the distinction of being the first new music ensemble formed through a listing......

In last week's Classical Music Agenda, I led with a concert on Sunday afternoon in the Corcoran Gallery of Art's acoustically splendid auditorium. It was the first concert of the season from the Contemporary Music Forum, but not even the Washington premiere of a major piece of new music, Paul Moravec's Tempest Fantasy, could draw more than a sparse audience. The composer himself was on hand to give a brief presentation on Tempest Fantasy, which......

The Classical Music Agenda has been missing in action for several weeks now, but there just has not been that much to hear. My weekly recommendations will return at the end of this month, as the September schedule heats up. For now, you will have to content yourselves with the following concerts, few and far between. This coming weekend (August 18 and 19, 8 p.m.), the Wolf Trap Opera Company concludes its season with a......

We knew it had to happen, but here it is almost July, and we have little to tell you about this week. So, the time has come for your Classical Music Agenda to take a well-deserved summer break. Today's installment will give you some ideas for concerts to hear from now through July. We will be back at the end of July. Until then, you can always find classical concert information at Ionarts. CAN WE......

The classical music world of Washington seems to have Baroque music on its mind. After plugging the Washington Early Music Festival in this week's Classical Music Agenda, it is time to tell you about the two Baroque operas that were staged over the weekend. For its first production this summer, the Wolf Trap Opera Company is staging Telemann's Orpheus, which I heard on Friday night. This opera, rediscovered only in the 1970s, combines a mostly......

Soon, the Washington heat and humidity will mean that we take a hiatus from classical music. Your Classical Music Agenda will even take a couple weeks off next month when there is just not that much to report. However, for the time being, we have some things to tell you about. Mainly, this is the final week of the Washington Early Music Festival, and there are usually two concerts a day just with that. I......

Here at DCist, we do not normally concern ourselves much with Baltimore, for obvious reasons contained in the name of this site. However, I do go up to Charm City regularly to hear concerts, and I mention things to hear there if they are exceptional. So, as I advised you all in last week's Classical Music Agenda, on Friday night DCist Got In On It and heard the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.......

A decade ago, conductor Lorin Maazel and his wife started the Châteauville Foundation, based at Castleton Farms in Rappahannock County, Virginia. On Monday night, rather than have Washingtonians go down to the Shenandoah Mountains, Maazel brought his young musicians to the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. A cast of talented singers and a finely honed small ensemble of instrumentalists gave an exquisite performance of Benjamin Britten's chilling and yet beautiful chamber opera The Turn of the......

To those readers who missed their Classical Music Agenda last week, apologies are in order. Your faithful chronicler was in Paris for the week and experiencing a general lack of Internet connectivity. Now I am back, and there a lot of concerts to tell you about. We may not emphasize this enough, but "classical music" does not mean only music that is old. In fact, living composers are still writing works that continue and modify......

Members of the Kirov Opera and its Orchestra, normally in residence at the historic Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, come to the Kennedy Center periodically to present touring productions of operas and other great pieces of music. Last night, we were in the Opera House to see the first performance of their staging of Giacomo Puccini's last and perhaps greatest opera, Turandot. It was an excellent show, with well-performed music and a splashy, colorful......

You could hear a lot of good classical music this week, much of it at no cost other than the trip to the concert hall. The biggest events this week are not going to be cheap, but the performances of these visiting musicians do promise to be extraordinary. We will be bringing you reviews, of course. For more concerts, go to our Classical Week in Washington feature at Ionarts. LOOK WHO'S IN TOWN: >> The......

We hope that some of you classical music fans heeded our advice in last Sunday's Classical Music Agenda and went to hear renowned pianist Alfred Brendel at the Kennedy Center last night. I was there, enjoying two hours of concentrated musical bliss, thanks to the Washington Performing Arts Society, which had brought him to Washington for twelve concerts before this one. Brendel is one of the most widely recorded pianists of all time, and he......

You've probably heard us going on about how Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born 250 years ago. Yesterday, to be exact. And where else would you have found us last night but listening to Mozart's music? As we recommended in last week's Classical Music Agenda, we spent the big night with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. This week, they are presenting a semi-staged performance of Mozart's early opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio......

As we noted in the Classical Music Agenda this week, Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky gave a nearly sold-out recital last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society. It was an event that the music critic of the Washington Times predicted would be fueled as much by the singer's star power as vocal talent. Judging by the sighing of the majority of female patrons around this DCist, that was certainly......

As you know from reading last week's Classical Music Agenda, we are at the beginning of a Mozart Year, with the 250th anniversary of the great Austrian composer's birth approaching on January 27. If you set foot in a classical concert in the next couple months, chances are good that you will hear Mozart. Considering the number of concerts we attend, Mozart fatigue could set in early. Not to worry, as there is still enough......

Last night, we heard the National Symphony Orchestra give its first program of 2006, the second in the usual series of three concerts. This concert featured guest conductor James Conlon and three opera singers in the marquee work that really filled the hall, a concert performance of the first act of Richard Wagner's opera Die Walküre. As we mentioned in last week's Classical Music Agenda, Washington is getting ready for a much-anticipated encounter with Wagner's......

Well, people, you had to get through a few weeks without your DCist Classical Music Agenda, and now the agony is over. Yes, there are once again concerts worth your while in Washington, and we are here to tell you where to go. If you are one of those classical fans who has somehow not heard, this year the world celebrates the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, on January 27. As a result, everyone and......

Well, Washington, we are now two weeks into Christmas Concert Hell, and it's only going to get worse. Non-holiday programs will increasingly be edged out by holiday ones, but this does not mean that there will be no good concerts to be heard, of either kind. Let DCist be your guide. We are planning to take some time off from the Classical Music Agenda for the holiday break: for concert information, read our Classical Week......

All this month, the Kennedy Center is hosting the Festival of China, with a full schedule of concerts, exhibits, and other events. Although many do not really fall under the rubric of our Classical Music Agenda, we are leading off our suggestions for you with Chinese concerts. FESTIVAL OF CHINA: >> There are some interesting dance companies performing at the Kennedy Center this week, beginning with the National Ballet of China, in the Kennedy Center's......