Classical Music Agenda

We got all that holiday concert business out of the way last week,
which allows us to focus on music of the non-mistletoe variety. What
is the perfect antidote to syrupy holiday music or yet another
performance of Handel’s Messiah? Some bracing, dissonant contemporary
music should be just the thing.

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Violist Kim Kashkashian (photo by Julien Jordes / ECM Records)>> At
her last area recital, this past April, violist Kim Kashkashian
featured a piece by Romanian composer Tigran Mansurian. She returns to
Washington on Tuesday (December 8, 7:30 p.m.) with an entire Armenian
Musical Evening, partnering with Mansurian himself on the piano and
percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky, sponsored by the Smithsonian Resident
Associates program at the National Museum of Natural History. General
admission tickets are $25, but full-time students may qualify to pay
$15.

>> From Armenia on to Romania, with a concert sponsored by the
Romanian Cultural Institute on Wednesday night (December 9, 7:30 p.m.)
at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Violinist Remus Azoitei and
pianist Eduard Stan will present Enescu-Brahms: European Encounters, a
program pairing works by Romanian composer George Enescu with those of
Johannes Brahms.

>> On the same evening (December 9, 7:30 p.m.) the free concert by the
Shanghai String Quartet at the Freer Gallery of Art will feature the
Washington premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s third string quartet, as
well as music by Beethoven and Debussy.

>> On Thursday (December 10, 8 p.m.) the University of Maryland Wind
Ensemble and string players from the UM Symphony Orchestra will
perform an alluring program of music by Schuller, more Enescu, and
Edgard Varèse’s Amériques at the Clarice Smith Center.

>> Members of fhe Diaz Trio will join forces with pianist Rodrigo
Ojeda to present a free concert that includes the violin sonata of
George Rochberg, also on Thursday night (December 10, 8 p.m.) at the
Library of Congress. Show up early for a pre-concert presentation at
6:15 p.m., which will include a performance of the suite for viola and
piano by Ernst Bloch, who died fifty years ago this year.

>> Mezzo-soprano was impressive as Penelope this summer in Wolf Trap
Opera’s production of Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. This
Thursday (December 10, 7:30 p.m.) she will give a recital with pianist
Kathleen Kelly at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, sponsored by
Vocal Arts Society. The program includes a rare performance of Libby
Larsen’s Love After 1950, premiered in 2000.

OLDER MUSIC:
>> Young Concert Artists presents a concert by violinist Ray Chen and
pianist Noreen Polera on Tuesday (December 8, 7:30 p.m.) in the
Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

>> With the cost of admission to the Phillips Collection on Sunday
(December 13, 4 p.m.) is a concert by the Raphael Trio, featuring all
of the works by Haydn for piano trio.

>> Trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth and pianist Steffen Horn will perform
a free recital on Sunday (December 13, 6:30 p.m.) at the National
Gallery of Art.