Christoph Eschenbach is nearing the end of an extraordinary first year as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra. A season of rather remarkable programming reaches its spiritual pinnacle with this week's concerts, when the NSO will give three performances of one of the monuments of the 20th-century orchestral repertoire, Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie (March 10-12). Eschenbach's predecessor, Leonard Slatkin, led a performance of this immense and phantasmagorical work ten years ago, and Eschenbach returns to it in the context of this month's maximum INDIA festival at the Kennedy Center (some of the rhythmic patterns in the work are based on Indian Tālas). Messiaen derived the work's title from two Sanskrit words meaning "the flow of time" and "cosmic play," and he described it as a "love song and hymn of joy, time, movement, rhythm, life, and death." more ›

Well, obviously, not the actual Beatles. As you know, because you live in the world, The Beatles broke up in 1969, and two of them are no longer living; and if the actual Beatles had played somewhere on this planet, the Internet, your cell phone and all of your relatives in their late 50s and early 60s would have crumbled into cyclones of OVER CAPACITY error messages. When I say that The Beatles invaded the Kennedy Center, what I mean is that a Beatles tribute band, known as the Classical Mystery Tour, stopped in D.C. last weekend and played three shows to packed houses, with the accompaniment of the National Symphony Orchestra. more ›

For the last subscription concerts of the season, the National Symphony Orchestra brought guest conductor Juraj Valčuha to the podium last night, in an alluring program of Haydn, Szymanowski, and Mahler. This concludes a two-year interim period before incoming music director Christoph Eschenbach takes the reins of the orchestra in the fall. The weekly game of "Who's Conducting This Week?" has given the NSO faithful the chance to make the acquaintance of a broad range of guest conductors, and Valčuha's debut with the orchestra is one of the high points. In one sense, this is a program for cognoscenti rather than those concert-goers who most enjoy hearing the same expected favorites over and over again. On the other hand, it is also excellent listening, plain and simple. more ›

Erich Kunzel, who was familiar to Washingtonians from his regular appearances at the podium of the National Symphony Orchestra Pops at annual Independence Day and Memorial Day concerts on the Capitol Lawn, died this morning near his home in Maine. He was 74. more ›

A few American orchestras have been experimenting with ways to engage the digital generation during their concerts, with interactive program notes that appear in real time through the hand-held or seat-back devices normally used for showing translations of foreign-language operas. As related by Baltimore Sun classical music critic Tim Smith over at his blog, the National Symphony Orchestra will be attempting something along those lines during its concert at Wolf Trap on July 30. more ›

The appointment of Christoph Eschenbach to head the National Symphony Orchestra may have had some unintended consequences. As Anne Midgette wondered in the Post yesterday, has the Eschenbach news deflated the significance of the first concerts led by Iván Fischer (pictured) as the NSO's Principal Conductor? Fischer may have felt odd seeing Eschenbach's picture on the marquees outside the Kennedy Center this week — the new Music Director will not actually conduct the orchestra again until 2010 — but fans of Fischer's Mahler, on disc and live with the NSO, filled the Concert Hall last night, to hear him conduct Mahler's third symphony. more ›

The financial news is far from rosy, but there is good news this morning for the city's classical music lovers. It looked to be a rudderless, vanilla season for the National Symphony Orchestra, without a Music Director since the departure of Leonard Slatkin at the end of last season. But the NSO has just announced a September surprise: veteran conductor Christoph Eschenbach (pictured), most recently of the Philadelphia Orchestra, will be appointed Music Director for the 2010-11 season. He will also hold the position of Music Director of the Kennedy Center, working with that organization's president, Michael Kaiser, on concert and festival programming. more ›

As you can read in a preview article by Stephen Brookes in the Post, the performance will be "spoken and sung by an amplified soprano (the remarkable Hila Plitmann, in her NSO debut) who at one point sings through a bullhorn." You may remember Plitmann's disembodied voice from Hans Zimmer's soundtrack for The Da Vinci Code, but don't hold that against her. Brookes also writes that Final Alice "calls for a gargantuan orchestra augmented by sirens, a theremin and an amplified 'folk group' of saxophones, a mandolin, a banjo and an accordion." In other words, this is not going to be your average evening at the symphony. more ›