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 in the Music Center at Strathmore. In their fun, inimitable way the host, pianist Christopher O’Riley, and the rest of the cast will introduce the audience to eight talented young classical musicians, including one from our general area, 15-year-old violinist Madeline Watson, from Damascus, Md. Tickets: $10 to $35. June 6, 7 p.m.
>> The major performance event of the week is undoubtedly the concerts of the National Symphony Orchestra. In the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Leonard Slatkin will lead the NSO in a performance of Mahler’s first symphony and one of Haydn’s Paris symphonies (No. 85 in B-flat major, “La Reine”). Finally, harpist Dotian Levalier will give the world premiere of the new harp concerto that the NSO commissioned for her from Mark Adamo, a work called Four Angels. In a preview article in the Post this week, the work was called “an unbridled ride through the empyrean, portraying angels from Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Zoroastrianism not as simpering cherubim but as wild, passionate creatures.” Tickets: $20 to $80. June 7 to 8, 7 p.m. June 9, 8 p.m. Full-time students are eligible to buy special $10 tickets, through the Attend! program, for all three performances.
>> This may be a week when you need to hear the programs offered by both of the area’s major orchestras. Music Director Designate Marin Alsop will also lead the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in concerts, in a performance of Dvořák’s ninth symphony and Elgar’s luscious cello concerto, featuring Alisa Weilerstein as soloist. To open the program, young conductor Rei Hotoda, winner of the Taki Concordia Fellowship, will lead a performance of Jennifer Higdon’s Fanfare Ritmico. There is one performance in the Music Center at Strathmore on Thursday: June 7, 8 p.m. The remaining performances on Friday to Sunday will take place in Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.
>> On Friday, the American Chamber Players will give the first of three concerts in the June Chamber Festival at the Kreeger Museum (2401 Foxhall Rd. NW). Philip Johnson and Richard Foster designed the house that the Kreegers turned into a museum for their art collection, and it is one of the little jewels of Washington. Tickets: $30. June 8, 7:30 p.m.
Photo of Mark Adamo by Martin Gram, courtesy of G. Schirmer, Inc.
