>> French pianist Hélène Grimaud (pictured) has been playing in our area about once a year recently, and she is back this week, with the National Symphony Orchestra (October 2 to 4). Guest conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya leads Grimaud in Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto, as well as the Consecration of the House overture and Shostakovich’s fifth symphony, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. Tickets: $20 to $80, with reduced tickets possibly available to patrons ages 18 to 25 (you now have to register with the Attend! program).

>> The New York Philharmonic comes back to town on Saturday (October 4, 4 p.m.), sponsored by Washington Performing Arts Society. Outgoing music director Lorin Maazel, taking a victory lap on this tour, will lead an all-Tchaikovsky program in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, but we’ll still be there.

>> On Sunday (October 5, 5:30 p.m.), a trip to Baltimore is in our future, to listen to Leon Fleisher’s 80th Birthday Celebration. Pianists Jonathan Biss, Yefim Bronfman, and Katherine Jacobson Fleisher will join Fleisher, who taught all of them, at Shriver Hall on the campus of Johns Hopkins University.

>> If Baltimore is out of the question, you have another Sunday choice (October 5, 2 p.m.) in the season’s first concert by the Kennedy Center Chamber Players, in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. The program, played by principal musicians from the National Symphony Orchestra, includes a Beethoven serenade for string trio, as well as a Shostakovich piano trio (no. 1) and piano quintet (G minor, op. 57). Tickets: $35.

>> A final concert makes the headlines this week, although it may be too strange for some listeners. On Tuesday night (September 30, 7 p.m.) avant-garde sound artist Bernhard Gal will take part in the Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music at Silver Spring’s Pyramid Atlantic Art Center.