Sometimes people think that classical music is only about the past, but this week’s top concert picks all focus on new compositions, some composed only last year. Find out what some of these living composers have been up to lately.

Diotima String Quartet

>> Last spring’s concert by the Quatuor Diotima was one of my ten favorite concerts of the year. The adventurous French string quartet returns to La Maison Française on Wednesday evening (January 19, 7:30 p.m.). The group will perform two very recent works, James Dillon’s sixth string quartet, composed in 2010, and Emmanuel Nunes’s Improvisation IV — l’électricité de la pensée humaine, from 2009. Other works by Roger Reynolds (who will join the group for a pre-concert discussion panel), Chaya Czernowin and Janáček round out the program.

>> The Kennedy Center is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the presidency of its namesake. The gala opening concert on Thursday (January 20, 7 p.m.), with performances by American Ballet Theater and the National Symphony Orchestra among many others, has already sold out. But the NSO will also perform the new work by American composer Peter Lieberson, Remembering JFK: An American Elegy, in three other concerts (January 22 to 24). The unconventional pianist Tzimon Barto will also perform Gershwin’s piano concerto.

>> If you want to hear some new music for free, try the concert on Sunday (January 23, 6:30 p.m.) at the National Gallery of Art, with the VERGE Ensemble playing music by Schoenberg, Ligeti, Cage, John Luther Adams and others.

>> If you have never really understood the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, let conductor Marin Alsop be your guide: she will introduce and then conduct the composer’s fifth symphony in the latest concert in her Off the Cuff series with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Friday (January 21, 8:15 p.m.), in the Music Center at Strathmore.