With apologies for skipping the Easter edition of the Classical Music Agenda, here are a few suggestions of ways to divert your ears this weekend. One of the best organists in the world at the moment, Olivier Latry from the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, will be in town this weekend. He will perform, in an annual tradition on the Octave of Easter, at the Great Gallery Organ of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (4th St. and Michigan Ave. NE) during two appearances on Sunday (April 19): during the noon Mass and at a 6 p.m. concert, both in the Great Upper Church and both free and open to the public. The most exciting part of Latry’s performances is to hear him improvise at the organ, a skill at which he is an acknowledged master. The video embedded below gives you a taste of one of his previous improvisations, at a 1996 concert at St. Patrick’s Church here in Washington.

>> Violinist Leonidas Kavakos’s performances in the area are always worth hearing. He will be playing two of the Big Five Romantic violin concertos this week with the National Symphony Orchestra this week—not on the same night—the Mendelssohn (April 16 and 18) and the Tchaikovsky (April 17). Iván Fischer will conduct, in a program that also features Tchaikovsky’s fifth symphony and a new work by Colorado composer Daniel Kellogg.