This week offers many excellent concerts for your listening schedule, but most of them are piled up in a lopsided way at the end of the week. For someone with my tastes, it is shaping up to be a weekend dedicated to Baroque music by historically informed performance (HIP) ensembles.

HIP:
>> Likely the best concert of the week is also free, the one featuring French HIP group Ensemble Matheus at the Library of Congress on Saturday night (February 9, 8 p.m.). Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore (pictured) will join for a blockbuster program of Handel, Gluck, and Vivaldi. Their recordings indicate that this is one not to miss. Reserved seats are already long gone, but you can arrive early and wait on line for an unused ticket.

>> A close second is the Toronto-based HIP ensemble Tafelmusik, who will play a concert in the Barns at Wolf Trap on Friday (February 8, 8 p.m.). Selections of music by Baroque greats (Rameau, Lully, Purcell, Marais) will be interspersed with corresponding mythological readings from Ovid by actor R. H. Thomson. Tickets: $30.

>> Finally, the Orchestra of New Spain will present another free concert at the National Gallery of Art on Sunday (February 10, 6:30 p.m.). The program consists of 18th-century music from the Spanish royal court, which will resound in the resonant space of the West Garden Court. Doors open at 6 p.m., at the Constitution Ave. entrance at Sixth St. NW.

MORE FREE CONCERTS:
>> Guitarist Richard Miller will play a free recital on the Friday concert series hosted by Georgetown University in McNeir Hall (February 8, 1:15 p.m.).

>> Thanks to Shriver Hall, Turkish cellist Efe Baltacigil and pianist Anna Polonsky will give a free concert at the Baltimore Museum of Art on Saturday (February 9, 3 p.m.) that should be worth the trip to Charm City.