Photo by akkleis.

This is a good week for hearing some great pianists in the area, and of all stripes and colors, too. Some good options for free concerts are listed after the jump.

>> First, Alfred Brendel may not be giving public recitals anymore, but he still has plenty to say, as he will do in a lecture titled On Character in Music, presented by Washington Performing Arts Society at the Austrian Embassy tomorrow (November 16, 7 p.m.). The evening will include Brendel performing some excerpts of Beethoven piano sonatas.

>> For a different perspective on 19th-century music, try the recital by Malcolm Bilson, a specialist on historical keyboard instruments, on Thursday (November 19, 7:30 p.m.), playing the Broadwood piano in the Mansion at Strathmore.

>> Of course, François-Frédéric Guy continues his Iron Man cycle of the Beethoven sonatas all this week (November 16 to 22, various times) at La Maison Française. What we heard at the first concert in the series on Friday night (review forthcoming for the Washington Post) was very promising indeed, and Guy’s recording of the Hammerklavier sonata makes the later concerts especially hard to resist.

>> Jean-Yves Thibaudet concludes a two-week stint with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, with a concert that features him playing the solo part of Liszt’s daunting Totentanz, this Thursday (November 19, 8 p.m.) in the Music Center at Strathmore.

>> Leif Ove Andsnes returns to Washington on Friday (November 20, 7:30 p.m.) to perform his new collaboration with South African visual artist Robin Rhode — a multimedia concert called Pictures Reframed featuring Mussorgsky’s beloved Pictures at an Exhibition, in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.