Cellist Alisa Weilerstein

It would be my guess that, of all cities in the world, Washington has the greatest number of free concerts to hear most weeks of the year. If you want to hear some good music, you have no excuse other than finding time.

WE LIKE FREE:
>> The Washington Bach Consort hosts a Noontime Cantata Series, with free concerts of Bach cantatas and organ music on the first Tuesday of the month. Take your lunchtime break and have a quiet moment this Tuesday (October 6, 12:10 p.m.) with Bach’s Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee, BWV 18, at the Church of the Epiphany (1317 G St. NW).

>> On Wednesdays this month, the National Gallery of Art is hosting a free noontime concert series beginning this Wednesday (October 7, 12:10 p.m.) with the National Gallery Wind Quintet playing music of Debussy, Taffanel, and others. Go to the lecture hall on the ground floor of the museum’s West Building.

>> The church of St. John’s, Lafayette Square (16th and H St. NW), is starting a new concert series (.PDF file) on Wednesdays. Their new organist, Michael Lodico, will open it this Wednesday (October 7, 12:10 p.m.).

>> The free concert series at the Library of Congress gets under way this week, with a performance by the Regev-Huang-Weilerstein Trio on Friday (October 9, 8 p.m.). The program will feature the alluring Alisa Weilerstein playing Mendelssohn’s first cello sonata, as well as Mendelssohn’s first piano trio and John Adams’s Road Movies. Tickets for reserved seats are already all spoken for, but if you arrive early (at the First St. entrance of the Jefferson Building) you have a very good chance of getting a stand-by seat.

>> On Sunday (October 11, 3 p.m.) the Left Bank Concert Society will play a program of music by Kurtág, Koston, Bartók, and von Dohnányi to open the Steinway Series of free concerts at the Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (8th and F St. NW). Free tickets are distributed at the G St. entrance of the museum starting one hour before the concert.