Soprano Anne Schwanewilms

This week’s agenda, regrettably one day late, opens with a special opportunity to attend a concert for free. German soprano Anne Schwanewilms will give a recital this Saturday, with pianist Malcolm Martineau, at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater (January 30, 7:30 p.m.). The program, sponsored by the Vocal Arts Society, combines two of the singer’s specialties, songs by Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. Vocal Arts Society is offering some free tickets to this recital, available as long as the supply lasts. All you have to do to claim one for yourself is to contact Vocal Arts Society by phone (202-365-9064) or by e-mail (wowears at vocalartssociety dot org) and tell them Charles Downey at DCist sent you. Please do your part to fill the house for this remarkable singer.

>> Among the other extraordinary free concerts this week is a lunchtime concert by the Auryn String Quartet on Wednesday (January 27, 12:10 p.m.), playing music by Berg and Webern from 1910 at the National Gallery of Art (in the lecture hall on the ground floor of the West Building).

>> The Library of Congress hosts the most unusual free concert of the week, with the early music group Ensemble Sequentia presenting its program The Rheingold Curse: A Germanic Saga of Greed and Revenge on Thursday (January 28, 8 p.m.), a retelling of the medieval Norse legends that gave rise to Wagner’s Ring cycle. Even without a pre-ordered ticket, you can usually arrive early and get an unused seat.