Michael Stern, conductor

It’s a New Year, and your Classical Music Agenda is back from its winter rest, able to ease back into work this week.

>> Michael Stern, a guest conductor this week with the National Symphony Orchestra, leads a program of symphonies by Barber and Sibelius. Stern, music director of the Kansas City Symphony and a widely respected guest conductor around the world, promises to provide exciting leadership. Pianist Emanuel Ax joins to play the second Beethoven concerto (January 14 to 16).

>> The Daedalus Quartet, an exciting young string quartet, plays a recital in the Barns at Wolf Trap on Friday night (January 15, 8 p.m.).

>> Another rising Chinese pianist, Di Wu, will give a recital at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China on Saturday night (January 16, 7:30 p.m.).

>> There will be free concerts on Sunday: a recital by cellist Hee-Young Lim and pianist Noreen Polera, playing sonatas by Beethoven, Chopin, and Britten, free with the price of admission to the Phillips Collection (January 17, 4 p.m.). Also, the National Gallery of Art Vocal Ensemble and ARTEK Early Music Ensemble will perform music by Monteverdi from the year 1610 at the National Gallery of Art (January 17, 6:30 p.m.).

>> If you live in Virginia, there is another free concert by the U.S. Army Chorus and Orchestra on Saturday night (January 16, 7:30 p.m.), at Vienna Presbyterian Church. Somewhat unusually, countertenor David Daniels will sing the solo part of Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody.

>> If you have always wanted to learn more about Beethoven’s “Waldstein” sonata, you can hear a presentation from Rob Kapilow about What Makes It Great? — and (more importantly) hear a complete performance of the work by pianist Yuliya Gorenman at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History on Tuesday (January 12, 7 p.m.).

>> If you like the music of Kurt Weill, you can hear an attempt by American Opera Theater to fuse some of his songs into a narrative. It’s called Songspiel, and it stars soprano Sylvia McNair, at Georgetown’s Gonda Theater next weekend (January 15 to 17).