If there are far more possible concerts in a week than I could possibly mention, it must be October. The good news is that there are more free concerts to tell you about, and the bad news is that there are so many concerts for me to attend that I could be spending every night listening to music. Wait, that sounds like more good news. CONTEMPORARY MUSIC: >> In last week’s agenda, I had Shostakovich’s…

The National Symphony Orchestra gave its first official performance of the fall season last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, opening by tradition with a performance of the national anthem. Music director Leonard Slatkin struck exactly the right tone by opening not with a perennial audience favorite, but with a piece never performed by the NSO until now, William Walton’s Partita for Orchestra (1957). It rocketed to a start in a blast of sound,…

If the Christmas shopping season begins the day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas Concert season begins in the first weekend of December. Some groups perform the same music ad nauseam — especially Handel’s Messiah, a work that Congress should pass a 10-year moratorium against performing — and others program new and interesting music every year. Just trust us when we say that, if you want to hear a Christmas Concert in this city, you can. Throughout…