This is your last weekend to take part in Take a Friend to the Symphony Month, the brain child of music blogger Drew McManus at Adaptistration. The big news in classical music this week is that the area’s two leading symphony orchestras are both offering great concerts that feature 20th-century music and even some from the 21st century. We are going to try to review them both for you.

MODERN SYMPHONY:
>> Former music director Mstislav Rostropovich returns to the podium of the National Symphony Orchestra this week. On Thursday (April 27, 7 p.m.), Friday (April 28, 8 p.m.), and Saturday (April 29, 8 p.m.), he will lead a program that includes Leonard Bernstein’s “political overture” Slava! (composed for Rostropovich’s first season at the helm of the NSO in 1977) and one of the most beautiful set of movements composed in the 20th century, Benjamin Britten’s Sea Interludes from his opera Peter Grimes. Radiant soprano Dawn Upshaw, the champion of new vocal music, will join the NSO — for the first time, is that possible? — to sing Henri Dutilleux’s Correspondances (composed for her in 2003), and this mostly new music program will dip into the Romantic period for Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony. Tickets: $20 to $79. Students can purchase $10 tickets, for the Thursday and Friday performances only, through the Kennedy Center’s Attend! program.

>> Second, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will be performing under guest conductor Carlos Kalmar this week. Their program includes Schubert’s Third Symphony, the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music, and Mozart’s little motet Ave Verum Corpus. However, the reason to hear this concert is the chance to hear a live performance of On the Transmigration of Souls, a transcendant work composed by John Adams in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and that won the composer the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2003. Unfortunately, the BSO will not be coming to Strathmore with this program, so you will have to go to Meyerhoff Hall in Baltimore on Thursday (April 27, 8 p.m.), Friday (April 28, 8 p.m.), or Sunday (April 30, 3 p.m.). The Concert Artists of Baltimore Symphonic Chorale and Peabody Children’s Chorus will join the orchestra. Tickets: $25 to $52.

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