Violinist Jennifer Koh For the last subscription concerts of the season, the National Symphony Orchestra brought guest conductor Juraj Valčuha to the podium last night, in an alluring program of Haydn, Szymanowski, and Mahler. This concludes a two-year interim period before incoming music director Christoph Eschenbach takes the reins of the orchestra in the fall. The weekly game of “Who’s Conducting This Week?” has given the NSO faithful the chance to make the acquaintance…

Without a doubt, the most important event in classical music this week is the opening of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s season. It will be the occasion of the official installation of Marin Alsop as the group’s music director, the first woman to hold that position with a major American symphony orchestra. A celebrated champion of contemporary music, particularly by American composers, Maestra Alsop has come into her new job with a full head of steam,…

This time of year, with so many concerts on the schedule, it is sometimes hard to separate what is essential from the rest. If we had to pick this week — and we do have to pick, every week — it would be as follows. >> Last week’s stellar concerts from the National Symphony, with Osmo Vänskä and Leonidas Kavakos, were scandalously underattended. If you like good music but were unable to hear the Finnish…

When Gustav Mahler, near the end of his life, conducted the world premiere of his eighth symphony, in Munich in 1910, he did so with amassed musical forces — orchestra, eight vocal soloists, off-stage brass, and several large choruses of adults and children — numbering over 1,000 people. Although Mahler never liked the name, the work is still often known as the “Symphony of a Thousand.” More an oratorio than a symphony in many ways,…

June is here, and that means that many of the major performing groups will be going on vacation. However, just as that happens, we have the Washington Early Music Festival most of this month, about which I’ll write more next week. This week, both of the area’s major symphonies are presenting major transcendant symphonies by Gustav Mahler, some of the most extravagant musical statements ever made. These works are not performed all that often, because…