As highlighted in this week’s Classical Music Agenda, the newly appointed music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Maestra Marin Alsop, is the first woman to take the helm of a major American orchestra. Tonight in the Music Center at Strathmore, she will lead the BSO in a program that features Fearful Symmetries by American composer John Adams. Last night, Marin Alsop sat down with John Adams at the quirky alternative venue known as Baltimore…

Susan Graham is one of those rare singers who combine broad audience appeal with critical approbation. She has won a Grammy, for a stellar CD of Charles Ives songs with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and sings on the greatest operatic stages of the world, in works ranging from Mozart to new operas like Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that Graham’s recital on Friday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater was sold…