Outside Washington, the classical music industry suffers the usual ups and downs, shocks and bumps, with layoffs at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and a reduced season ahead. Inside the Beltway, the chaos is more than just cyclic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It\u2019s all about the Kennedy Center and the ongoing fallout from Donald Trump\u2019s takeover of the performing arts center last February, and his attempt to change its name in December. Audiences and artists have fled, a boycott has apparently crippled the institution\u2019s finances, and, in February, the president summarily announced that it would shut down for two years, ostensibly for renovation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Still, the National Symphony Orchestra thrives artistically, the now-itinerant Washington National Opera is hewing to its announced season in other halls, and presenting organizations such as Washington Performing Arts are soldiering on in new venues. It\u2019s chaos and loss everywhere, and all so unnecessary, which only makes the music more essential. People don\u2019t just want art, they need it, and that makes listening all the more vital.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018Tristan und Isolde,\u2019 by Richard Wagner<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nLise Davidsen is the most exciting dramatic soprano in the world today, with a voice of seemingly limitless power and expressive range. In January, she sang Wagner\u2019s Isolde from \u201cTristan and Isolde\u201d for the first time, in Barcelona, and the reviews were spectacular (\u201cThere can be no doubt that we are witnessing the emergence of the great Isolde of the coming decade,\u201d according to one critic). Next month, she undertakes the role at the Metropolitan Opera in a new production by the acclaimed director Yuval Sharon. Michael Spyres sings Tristan, and the Met\u2019s music director, Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, conducts. This is the biggest event of the opera season. March 9-April 20, Lincoln Center, New York. metopera.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u2018The People United Will Never Be Defeated,\u2019 by Frederic Rzewski<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nOne of the great contemporary classics of keyboard music was premiered half a century ago at the Kennedy Center. Frederic Rzewski\u2019s \u201cThe People United Will Never Be Defeated\u201d is a set of dense, virtuosic, brilliant variations on a Chilean protest song that became popular in the early 1970s, around the time a U.S.-backed coup overthrew a popularly elected government in Chile and installed the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet. Since then, Rzewski\u2019s variations have challenged pianists, rewarded audiences and taken their place on recordings and programs next to classic works by Bach (\u201cThe Goldberg Variations\u201d) and Beethoven (\u201cThe Diabelli Variations\u201d). The New York Philharmonic commissioned an orchestration (by several composers) of the piano work, which will be premiered by the orchestra\u2019s incoming artistic director, Gustavo Dudamel. New York has high hopes that Dudamel can keep the Philharmonic relevant, and appealing to new and existing audiences alike. March 12-17, Lincoln Center, New York. nyphil.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u2018The Crucible,\u2019 opera by Robert Ward<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nShortly after Trump announced his takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year, the creative team behind a contemporary opera called \u201cFellow Travelers\u201d pulled their work from the Washington National Opera\u2019s spring season. The opera, composed by Gregory Spears with a libretto by Greg Pierce, is based on a Thomas Mallon novel about two gay men in love during the McCarthy-era \u201clavender scares\u201d of the 1950s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe creative team issued a statement saying the opera\u2019s themes of inclusion and acceptance were incompatible with Trump\u2019s divisive and anti-LGBT politics. The WNO replaced it with Robert Ward\u2019s \u201cThe Crucible,\u201d an American classic from the middle of the last century, based on Arthur Miller\u2019s play of the same name that uses the Salem witch trials as a parable of McCarthyism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe opera is lyrical, accessible and dramatically incisive, and it will give audiences a chance to experience the WNO in Lisner Auditorium, where the company is likely to perform some part of its upcoming seasons now that it, like so many other artists and organizations, has fled Trump\u2019s Kennedy Center. March 21-29, Lisner Auditorium, Washington. washnatopera.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Innocence,\u2019 by Kaija Saariaho<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nSince its 2021 premiere at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Kaija Saariaho\u2019s opera \u201cInnocence\u201d has been seen in major theaters in Europe and San Francisco. Few contemporary operas generate this kind of buzz and acclaim. The subject is difficult: the aftermath of a school shooting. And the music is eclectic, with Scandinavian folk mashed up with contemporary opera idioms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe Metropolitan Opera is presenting the work in a production that includes the revered American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the Finnish ethno-pop singer Vilma J\u00e4\u00e4. April 6-29, Lincoln Center, New York. metopera.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nBruckner, Symphony No. 7<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nAn indifferently performed or badly conducted performance of Bruckner\u2019s Symphony No. 7 is worse than soporific. Sleep would be a blessed escape from its geological slabs of tedium. But when it is performed with discipline and passion, Bruckner\u2019s symphony is spiritually shattering, and restorative.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nFortunately, all the stars are in alignment for the National Symphony Orchestra\u2019s performance under music director Gianandrea Noseda to be a monumental evening. The NSO strings are sounding better than they ever have, and the wind and brass sections are full of some of the finest players in the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThis April performance, which also features the orchestra\u2019s principal trumpet, William Gerlach, in a concerto by Haydn, comes as the orchestra begins its final weeks at the Kennedy Center, before the two-year shutdown begins in July. It will be an emotional event, and audiences who have reluctantly boycotted the orchestra to send a signal to the Trump administration can show their loyalty to the hometown band as it departs for a new chapter, independent of the now-fraught and failing performing arts venue. April 10-11, Kennedy Center, Washington. kennedy-center.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nDebussy Pr\u00e9ludes for Piano, Books I and II<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nThe definition of a \u201cprelude\u201d would seem simple: something that comes before the main event. But by the time Debussy wrote his two books of preludes for the piano between 1909 and 1913, the musical form was beyond definition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nAt best we can say that what is true of preludes generally is true of Debussy\u2019s magnificent exercise in the form: They are vignettes, stand-alone morsels that sound like miniature epics or monumental haiku. The eminent French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet grew up with these pieces and has said he always wanted to program them as an evening-length event. And now Washington Performing Arts is bringing Thibaudet to play them at Strathmore Music Center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nIt should be a fully immersive, mesmerizing evening that explores the limits of the piano\u2019s powers of sonority, nuance and color. April 23, Strathmore Music Center, Bethesda. washingtonperformingarts.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nMass in B Minor by Bach<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nThe website for the Washington Bach Consort says that Bach\u2019s 1749 Mass in B Minor is \u201carguably among the greatest musical compositions in any tradition.\u201d Two small corrections: Remove \u201carguably\u201d and \u201camong.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe season finale of the beloved baroque music ensemble, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, is devoted to its namesake\u2019s most monumental achievement, a setting of the Latin Mass texts that sprawls into a colossus of musical invention.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nIt\u2019s almost as if Bach, a Lutheran, wanted to honor, memorialize and lay to rest forever the Catholic Mass by writing a version that could never be surpassed. April 25-26, National Presbyterian Church, Washington. bachconsort.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Il trittico\u2019 by Puccini<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nIn recent years, music director Noseda has made opera in concert a staple of National Symphony Orchestra programming. Last year\u2019s performance of Samuel Barber\u2019s \u201cVanessa\u201d was a highlight of the season, resurrecting a drama that often falls flat onstage as a magnificent oratorio of self-delusion and suffering.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThis year, he has programmed Puccini\u2019s \u201cIl trittico,\u201d which translates as \u201cThe Triptych,\u201d a collection of three one-act operas written late in the composer\u2019s career. This is some of Puccini\u2019s most complex and affecting music, at turns brooding and violent, ecstatic and resigned, and deliriously insouciant and engaging.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe orchestra will take the program to Carnegie Hall in New York (May 3), where it should earn the group the reputation it now deserves, as a top-tier orchestra playing on the world stage. April 29 and May 1, Kennedy Center, Washington. kennedy-center.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Idomeneo\u2019 by Mozart<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nPerhaps the easiest summary of Mozart\u2019s 1781 opera \u201cIdomeneo\u201d is: IYKYK. If you know Mozart, you know it is with this serious, sober, powerfully affecting work that he began to produce the greatest operas of the 18th century. If you know opera, you know there is an extraordinarily high return on investment for any time spent with \u201cIdomeneo.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nThe Washington Concert Opera\u2019s spring season includes both Mozart\u2019s masterpiece (May 9) and Bizet\u2019s \u201cThe Pearl Fishers\u201d (March 14), as if to cover the two poles of Apollonian and Dionysian entertainment. After last November\u2019s splendid performance of Gluck\u2019s \u201cIphig\u00e9nie en Tauride,\u201d another 18th-century work based on grim mythological material, there\u2019s every reason to hope this foray into \u201copera seria\u201d will be equally moving. March 14 and May 9, Lisner Auditorium, Washington. concertopera.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nOrpheus: The Magic of the Arts<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n\nThe PostClassical Ensemble, a consistently innovative and adventurous group, devotes this program to the Orpheus myth, a perennial inspiration to composers. Angel Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez\u2019s orchestra collaborates with Dorothy Kosinski, director emerita of the Phillips Collection, to look at parallels between myth, music and the visual arts. It\u2019s an eclectic program, from a cancan by Offenbach to music by Philip Glass and Igor Stravinsky.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\nNo surprise that composers would envy Orpheus, a musician who could enchant animals, nature and the spirits of the underworld, and even \u2014 almost \u2014 bring back the dead. May 20, Kennedy Center, Washington. kennedy-center.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n
Lise Davidsen is the most exciting dramatic soprano in the world today, with a voice of seemingly limitless power and expressive range. In January, she sang Wagner\u2019s Isolde from \u201cTristan and Isolde\u201d for the first time, in Barcelona, and the reviews were spectacular (\u201cThere can be no doubt that we are witnessing the emergence of the great Isolde of the coming decade,\u201d according to one critic). Next month, she undertakes the role at the Metropolitan Opera in a new production by the acclaimed director Yuval Sharon. Michael Spyres sings Tristan, and the Met\u2019s music director, Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, conducts. This is the biggest event of the opera season. March 9-April 20, Lincoln Center, New York. metopera.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the great contemporary classics of keyboard music was premiered half a century ago at the Kennedy Center. Frederic Rzewski\u2019s \u201cThe People United Will Never Be Defeated\u201d is a set of dense, virtuosic, brilliant variations on a Chilean protest song that became popular in the early 1970s, around the time a U.S.-backed coup overthrew a popularly elected government in Chile and installed the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet. Since then, Rzewski\u2019s variations have challenged pianists, rewarded audiences and taken their place on recordings and programs next to classic works by Bach (\u201cThe Goldberg Variations\u201d) and Beethoven (\u201cThe Diabelli Variations\u201d). The New York Philharmonic commissioned an orchestration (by several composers) of the piano work, which will be premiered by the orchestra\u2019s incoming artistic director, Gustavo Dudamel. New York has high hopes that Dudamel can keep the Philharmonic relevant, and appealing to new and existing audiences alike. March 12-17, Lincoln Center, New York. nyphil.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Shortly after Trump announced his takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year, the creative team behind a contemporary opera called \u201cFellow Travelers\u201d pulled their work from the Washington National Opera\u2019s spring season. The opera, composed by Gregory Spears with a libretto by Greg Pierce, is based on a Thomas Mallon novel about two gay men in love during the McCarthy-era \u201clavender scares\u201d of the 1950s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The creative team issued a statement saying the opera\u2019s themes of inclusion and acceptance were incompatible with Trump\u2019s divisive and anti-LGBT politics. The WNO replaced it with Robert Ward\u2019s \u201cThe Crucible,\u201d an American classic from the middle of the last century, based on Arthur Miller\u2019s play of the same name that uses the Salem witch trials as a parable of McCarthyism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The opera is lyrical, accessible and dramatically incisive, and it will give audiences a chance to experience the WNO in Lisner Auditorium, where the company is likely to perform some part of its upcoming seasons now that it, like so many other artists and organizations, has fled Trump\u2019s Kennedy Center. March 21-29, Lisner Auditorium, Washington. washnatopera.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Since its 2021 premiere at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Kaija Saariaho\u2019s opera \u201cInnocence\u201d has been seen in major theaters in Europe and San Francisco. Few contemporary operas generate this kind of buzz and acclaim. The subject is difficult: the aftermath of a school shooting. And the music is eclectic, with Scandinavian folk mashed up with contemporary opera idioms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Metropolitan Opera is presenting the work in a production that includes the revered American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the Finnish ethno-pop singer Vilma J\u00e4\u00e4. April 6-29, Lincoln Center, New York. metopera.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n An indifferently performed or badly conducted performance of Bruckner\u2019s Symphony No. 7 is worse than soporific. Sleep would be a blessed escape from its geological slabs of tedium. But when it is performed with discipline and passion, Bruckner\u2019s symphony is spiritually shattering, and restorative.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Fortunately, all the stars are in alignment for the National Symphony Orchestra\u2019s performance under music director Gianandrea Noseda to be a monumental evening. The NSO strings are sounding better than they ever have, and the wind and brass sections are full of some of the finest players in the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This April performance, which also features the orchestra\u2019s principal trumpet, William Gerlach, in a concerto by Haydn, comes as the orchestra begins its final weeks at the Kennedy Center, before the two-year shutdown begins in July. It will be an emotional event, and audiences who have reluctantly boycotted the orchestra to send a signal to the Trump administration can show their loyalty to the hometown band as it departs for a new chapter, independent of the now-fraught and failing performing arts venue. April 10-11, Kennedy Center, Washington. kennedy-center.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The definition of a \u201cprelude\u201d would seem simple: something that comes before the main event. But by the time Debussy wrote his two books of preludes for the piano between 1909 and 1913, the musical form was beyond definition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At best we can say that what is true of preludes generally is true of Debussy\u2019s magnificent exercise in the form: They are vignettes, stand-alone morsels that sound like miniature epics or monumental haiku. The eminent French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet grew up with these pieces and has said he always wanted to program them as an evening-length event. And now Washington Performing Arts is bringing Thibaudet to play them at Strathmore Music Center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It should be a fully immersive, mesmerizing evening that explores the limits of the piano\u2019s powers of sonority, nuance and color. April 23, Strathmore Music Center, Bethesda. washingtonperformingarts.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The website for the Washington Bach Consort says that Bach\u2019s 1749 Mass in B Minor is \u201carguably among the greatest musical compositions in any tradition.\u201d Two small corrections: Remove \u201carguably\u201d and \u201camong.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The season finale of the beloved baroque music ensemble, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, is devoted to its namesake\u2019s most monumental achievement, a setting of the Latin Mass texts that sprawls into a colossus of musical invention.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s almost as if Bach, a Lutheran, wanted to honor, memorialize and lay to rest forever the Catholic Mass by writing a version that could never be surpassed. April 25-26, National Presbyterian Church, Washington. bachconsort.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In recent years, music director Noseda has made opera in concert a staple of National Symphony Orchestra programming. Last year\u2019s performance of Samuel Barber\u2019s \u201cVanessa\u201d was a highlight of the season, resurrecting a drama that often falls flat onstage as a magnificent oratorio of self-delusion and suffering.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This year, he has programmed Puccini\u2019s \u201cIl trittico,\u201d which translates as \u201cThe Triptych,\u201d a collection of three one-act operas written late in the composer\u2019s career. This is some of Puccini\u2019s most complex and affecting music, at turns brooding and violent, ecstatic and resigned, and deliriously insouciant and engaging.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The orchestra will take the program to Carnegie Hall in New York (May 3), where it should earn the group the reputation it now deserves, as a top-tier orchestra playing on the world stage. April 29 and May 1, Kennedy Center, Washington. kennedy-center.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Perhaps the easiest summary of Mozart\u2019s 1781 opera \u201cIdomeneo\u201d is: IYKYK. If you know Mozart, you know it is with this serious, sober, powerfully affecting work that he began to produce the greatest operas of the 18th century. If you know opera, you know there is an extraordinarily high return on investment for any time spent with \u201cIdomeneo.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Washington Concert Opera\u2019s spring season includes both Mozart\u2019s masterpiece (May 9) and Bizet\u2019s \u201cThe Pearl Fishers\u201d (March 14), as if to cover the two poles of Apollonian and Dionysian entertainment. After last November\u2019s splendid performance of Gluck\u2019s \u201cIphig\u00e9nie en Tauride,\u201d another 18th-century work based on grim mythological material, there\u2019s every reason to hope this foray into \u201copera seria\u201d will be equally moving. March 14 and May 9, Lisner Auditorium, Washington. concertopera.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The PostClassical Ensemble, a consistently innovative and adventurous group, devotes this program to the Orpheus myth, a perennial inspiration to composers. Angel Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez\u2019s orchestra collaborates with Dorothy Kosinski, director emerita of the Phillips Collection, to look at parallels between myth, music and the visual arts. It\u2019s an eclectic program, from a cancan by Offenbach to music by Philip Glass and Igor Stravinsky.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n No surprise that composers would envy Orpheus, a musician who could enchant animals, nature and the spirits of the underworld, and even \u2014 almost \u2014 bring back the dead. May 20, Kennedy Center, Washington. kennedy-center.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\u2018The People United Will Never Be Defeated,\u2019 by Frederic Rzewski<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
\u2018The Crucible,\u2019 opera by Robert Ward<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
\u2018Innocence,\u2019 by Kaija Saariaho<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Bruckner, Symphony No. 7<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Debussy Pr\u00e9ludes for Piano, Books I and II<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Mass in B Minor by Bach<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
\u2018Il trittico\u2019 by Puccini<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
\u2018Idomeneo\u2019 by Mozart<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Orpheus: The Magic of the Arts<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n