December is the month when the classical music concert schedule gets hijacked by that yearly plague, the Christmas Concert, and its politically correct counterpart, the Holiday Concert. Later this week, we’ll be bringing you a special roundup of musical opportunities to get yourself in the Spirit of the Season, so the pickings in the weekly agenda are going to get slimmer from now through New Year’s. FREE CONCERTS: >> Who doesn’t need to save money…

Leonard Slatkin has been programming good music for the National Symphony Orchestra this season, much of it featuring an impressive roster of guest soloists. So far this fall, this DCist has heard Itzhak Perlman playing Barber and could have heard, but sadly missed, Nikolaj Znaider playing Bruch and Truls Mørk playing Elgar. True, more unusual fare has been safely packaged with favorites, for the most part, but in concert programming, just as in politics, it…