Well, now that you’ve (hopefully) finished your tax return, you can clear your mind with some classical music. Blogger Drew McManus, at Adaptistration, has dubbed April Take a Friend to the Orchestra Month. If you like the symphony, buy a ticket for a friend who has never heard an orchestral concert. Drew is running articles by music critics and other readers who have done just that. Here are some concerts to which you can take your classical music neophyte.

TAKE A FRIEND TO THE ORCHESTRA:
>> The best choice is probably the National Symphony Orchestra, joined this week by violinist Julian Rachlin and guest conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, on Thursday (April 20, 7 p.m.), Friday (April 21, 8 p.m.), and Saturday (April 22, 8 p.m.). The program combines a modern classic (Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, pleasing to the ear), with Prokofiev’s powerful second violin concerto, and an old favorite, accessible to everyone, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. Tickets in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall run from $20 to $79. Students can buy discounted tickets — for a mere $10, the price of a movie ticket — to the Thursday and Friday performances, through the Kennedy Center Attend! program.

>> Better than $10 tickets, of course, would be free tickets. On Friday (April 21, 8 p.m.), a particularly fine local early music group, the Washington Bach Consort, will perform a free concert at the Library of Congress. As they did in their concert at the Library last April, the program will combine a cantata by J. S. Bach (Es ist das heil uns kommen her, BWV 9) with a selection of twentieth-century choral works by American composers. If you cannot or do not want to reserve a place through Ticketmaster, with the usual fees, show up early and wait on line for an unused seat. I have never been turned away doing that.