‘Tis the season for holiday concerts and performances of Handel’s Messiah, but we will have our yearly post on all that business later this week. If you would like to have your music not so much in the spirit, here are a few options.
Yuja Wang, pianist>> Lang Lang’s withdrawal delayed the premiere of American composer Jennifer Higdon’s new piano concerto, which will finally take place this week, with another young Chinese pianist, Yuja Wang, taking the part with the National Symphony Orchestra (December 3 to 5, various times). It may be the new music event of the season.
>> The Trio Solisti offer an interesting program on Thursday night (December 3, 7:30 p.m.) in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, including Paul Moravec’s Passacaglia and a trio arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
>> Holy schedule conflicts, Batman! Thursday night is also the return of pianist Angela Hewitt, who will perform Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations (December 3, 8 p.m.), presented by WPAS in the Music Center at Strathmore.
MAKE IT FREE:
>> The National Gallery of Art closes its 64th American Music Festival with a free recital by pianist Joel Fan on Wednesday at lunchtime (December 2, 12:10 p.m.). The program includes music by Carter, Bolcom, Gandolfi, and Kirchner.
>> If you would rather have vocal music with your lunch that day, try the free concert at St. John’s, Lafayette Square (December 2, 12:10 p.m.) by the Madrigal Singers from St. Alban’s and National Cathedral School.
>> For a different kind of premiere, attend a performance of Nicolò Ceva’s Trionfo per l’Assunzione della Santissima Vergine, a work first performed in Naples in 1705, as it is revived at Georgetown University’s Wolfington Hall (December 3, 8 p.m.).
>> The St. Lawrence String Quartet will give a free concert on Friday night (December 4, 8 p.m.) at the Library of Congress, featuring the Washington premiere of John Adams’s string quartet and the world premiere of a new string quartet by Ezequiel Viñao. Oh, and there is another quartet by somebody named Haydn.
