The problem this week for classical music aficionados in Washington is not what to hear, but what not to hear. That is, what — in the schedule pile-up of exceptional music — can one afford to miss. Here are some of your choices.

Mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter.

>> One of the best classical albums to reach my ears last year was called Terezín, a selection of music by composers who were interned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II. The selections ranged from the bluesy cabaret to the sugary tones of Austro-Hungarian operetta, from the simplest strophic songs to more cutting-edge examples of avant-garde trends, creating a most convincing cross-section of emotions, embracing the optimistic, the despairing, and the brutally analytical. This Thursday (April 30, 8 p.m.), a trio of the performers on that disc — mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, violinist Daniel Hope, and pianist Bengt Forsberg — will perform some of this music in a recital sponsored by the Vocal Arts Society in the Music Center at Strathmore. Bret Werb, Director of Music at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will present a pre-concert lecture entitled “Music as Attack / Music as Escape” at 6:30 p.m. Tickets: $25 to $55.

>> If that’s your Thursday plan, on Friday (May 1, 7:30 p.m.) you should leap at the chance to hear the music of an extremely interesting Russian composer, Lera Auerbach, at the piano for a concert of her own compositions with cellist Alisa Weilerstein and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. This concert kicks off the Kennedy Center’s Contemporary Music Week, and Auerbach is one of fifteen of the world’s leading living composers featured. Tickets: $25.

>> Conductor Helmuth Rilling is back at the helm of the National Symphony Orchestra this week (April 30 to May 2). Past appearances make it likely that Rilling’s take on Haydn’s choral masterpiece The Creation, with the University of Maryland Concert Choir in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, should be worth hearing. Tickets: $20 to $80.