Classical Week in Washington is a weekly feature that appears on Sundays, at the same time as my Classical Music Agenda for DCist. If there are concerts that you would like to see included on our schedule, send your suggestions by e-mail (ionarts at gmail dot com). Plan your concert schedule farther ahead with our Classical Month in Washington (May).
Monday, May 15, 7 pm; Thursday, May 18, 7:30 pm
Rossini, L'Italiana in Algeri
With Olga Borodina, Juan Diego Flórez, and Lyubov Petrova
Washington National Opera
Wednesday, May 17, 12:10 pm
Stephen Ackert, harpsichord [FREE]
Music by Gabrieli, Scarlatti, and anonymous 16th-century Italian composers
National Gallery of Art, West Building Lecture Hall
Wednesday, May 17, 7:30 pm; Friday, May 19, 7:30 pm
Mozart, La Clemenza di Tito
Washington National Opera
Kennedy Center Opera House
Wednesday, May 17, 8 pm
Maurizio Pollini, piano
The Music Center at Strathmore (WPAS)
Thursday, May 18, 8pm
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, with conductor Roberto Minczuk and cellist Ilya Finkelshteyn
Music by Barber, Haydn, and Beethoven
Meyerhoff Symphony Hall (Baltimore, Md.)
Friday, May 19, 12 noon
Opera Scenes (Part II) [FREE]
University of Maryland Opera Studio
Arts Club of Washington (2017 I Street NW)
Friday, May 19, 7:30 pm
John Paul, harpsichord
Music from 18th-century France
The Mansion at Strathmore
Friday, May 19, 8 pm (pre-concert presentation by Susan Clermont, 6:15 pm)
Cho-Liang Lin (violin) and André-Michel Schub (piano) [FREE]
Mozart sonatas, Walton's Sonata for Violin and Piano (1950), and world premiere of a sonata by Bright Sheng
Library of Congress
Friday, May 19, 8 pm; Saturday, May 20, 8 pm
Sarah Wolfson (soprano), Alexander Kaimbacher (tenor), Jerome Barry (baritone), George Peachey (piano)
Austrian and American operetta
Embassy of Austria (Embassy Series)
Friday, May 19, 7:30 pm; Saturday, May 20, 8:15 pm
Palestrina Choir:
Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle (Friday)
St. Rita’s Catholic Church, Alexandria (Saturday)
Saturday, May 20, 2 pm
Wonny Song, piano (WPAS)
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater
Saturday, May 20, 3 pm
On Stage with Washington National Opera: American Opera [FREE]
Members of Washington Opera's Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program
For more information, call (202) 448-3412
Renwick Gallery, Grand Salon
Saturday, May 20, time unknown
WPAS Annual Gala and Auction
Lang Lang, piano
Program TBA
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Saturday, May 20, 8 pm
The Red Priest’s Vespers: Known and Less Known Masterworks by Vivaldi
Chantry and American Bach Sinfonia
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church (Bethesda, Md.)
Saturday, May 20, 8 pm
National Philharmonic: All Tchaikovsky
Carter Brey, cello
Music Center at Strathmore
Saturday, May 20, 8 pm; Sunday, May 21, 2 pm
Haydn's La Canterina and Donizetti's Le Convenienze Teatrali
Directed by David Toulson
Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia
Thomas Jefferson Community Theater (Alexandria, Va.)
Sunday, May 21, 4 pm
Benjamin Britten, War Requiem
Cathedral Choral Society, with Marina Shaguch (soprano), Robin Leggate (tenor), Marcus Brück (baritone)
Washington National Cathedral
Sunday, May 21, 5 pm
Contemporary Music Forum [FREE, with price of admission]
Phillips Collection
Sunday, May 21, 5 pm
Choral Arts Society of Washington, 40th Anniversary Celebration
Kennedy Center Concert Hall
Sunday, May 21, 6:30 pm
National Gallery Orchestra, with Vladimir Lande, guest conductor, and James Bryla, clarinetist [FREE]
Music by Debussy and other composers
National Gallery of Art
Do you know what Pollini is playing at the Stratmore?
ReplyDeleteNo program!
DC is such an amature when it comes to classical (as well as food).
OK. I said it.
It's such a pleasure to provide this free service to someone like yourself. I generally do not publish pissy remarks unless they are connected with a name and e-mail address. (Or nonsensical ones: the city of Washington is an amateur? What does that mean?) If you want to be critical, fine, but be honest and identify yourself.
ReplyDeleteAs for your question, WPAS has not yet published Pollini's program. It will likely be more or less what he played at Carnegie Hall last Sunday and in Chicago today. It will likely include some of the Chopin preludes, as featured on his newest recording.
Charles actually if you go to WPAS Press Room on their site the press release about Pollini's May 17 date includes the complete program, all Chopin and Liszt as you surmised. They did the same for Lang Lang (program was posted in the Press Room but not on the link for buying tickets for the recital). Why is anyone's guess, but at least this particular Anon can get his or her fill of vital information.
ReplyDeleteThanks Charles. Acutually I do appreciate your significant contribution to the classical world in Washington, and was actually refreshed to find your site. Being a former pianist myself, I think it's especially blessed that we have you, a pianist, to ensure that piano music is equally covered. As for me, having come from NY and Vienna, I still do beleive that DC is a relatively "amature" player in cultivating classical music. People come to live in Washington not because it has a world class classic music scene. The big wigs play at Stratmore and the Kennedy, where tickets are expensive; there are no cheap seats or last minute 1/2 price seats. There is not a credible conservatory school here where music students give recitals where one could just go and listen. As far as I know, the NSO does not let audience into its rehersals. If you want to here a Brandenburg, you'd wait for months before anyone plays it. Program notes are not posted; and, why not? Are people expected to pay $40+ and more just to get an experience of "going to a piano recital?" Does one go into an Italian restaurant and say to the waitor, give me italian?
ReplyDeleteThese are what I mean by DC is amature. Yea, I guess you can call a negavtive observation a criticism.
As for me being an ANON, I think that is a personal choice and it is respected in most blog sites. Most of your readers on the blog are anonymous to you. If I said my name was so and so, you wouldn't know me any better. Sometimes the most genuine communication happens in an anonymous forum.
I have no problem with anonymous comments that are reasoned, even if critical. (Obviously, since here you are commenting again.) I do normally reject comments that are so vitriolic and off-the-cuff principally because the commenter wants to be protected by anonymity. Newspapers generally request full identification, and I think it's a reasonable expectation. However, most reasonable comments, even anonymous ones, I generally allow.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as George pointed out, you can read Pollini's program here.