This time of year, with so many concerts on the schedule, it is sometimes hard to separate what is essential from the rest. If we had to pick this week — and we do have to pick, every week — it would be as follows.

>> Last week’s stellar concerts from the National Symphony, with Osmo Vänskä and Leonidas Kavakos, were scandalously underattended. If you like good music but were unable to hear the Finnish program last week, you must get to the Kennedy Center Concert Hall for this week’s concerts, which feature the young and vibrantly talented Julia Fischer playing the Khachaturian violin concerto. Emmanuel Krivine will be the guest conductor. March 15 to 17, various times (full-time students should take advantage of the $10 tickets for the Thursday and Friday performances, through the Attend! program).

>> On Friday, one of the more cutting-edge Washington performing groups, the Post-Classical Ensemble, will give a concert called The Song of the Earth at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park. This unusual program features Gustav Mahler’s Der Abschied, one of the songs in the cycle Das Lied von der Erde, in the chamber orchestra arrangement. The texts of that cycle were based on Chinese poems, and this program combines it with related Chinese music, including the premiere of Zhou Long’s The Farewell, a new setting of the Chinese poems that inspired Der Abschied. March 16, 8 p.m. $30 (students, $7).

>> On Sunday, we are compelled to continue attending the three-concert cycle of the Mozart string quintets and the Britten string quartets, performed by the Auryn String Quartet and violist Roger Tapping. These concerts are offered by the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences, at the Congregation Beth-El in Bethesda. March 18, 3 p.m.