Concert Hall

CORRECTION: The original headline stated the incorrect venue for the performance. It has since been corrected. Midway through a grueling 10-week, 47-concert U.S. tour, the Dublin Philharmonic found itself having to patch together a program for its Schlesinger Concert Hall appearance Friday. It turned out that the scheduled soloist, soprano Celine Byrne, was snowbound in Dublin. But Irish pianist Peter Tuite was on hand and, instead of the assorted arias planned for the mid-portion of the concert (between the Brahms...

Thursday, APRIL 25 FDR's Wild Side, a National Park Service ranger discusses the wildlife that inhabit the area around the former president's memorial; binoculars and bird guides provided. 10 a.m.-noon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Ohio Drive NW. Free. Robert Steele, 202-438-9574. Enlist in the 1863 Union Army, participate in a drill with Civil War-era attired National Park Service rangers. 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. and 2-3:30 p.m., Lincoln Memorial, 23rd Street NW and West Potomac Park.

Madison Square Garden LP, owner of the New York entertainment arena and other holdings, including the Rockettes and the New York Knicks, is scouting sites in the District where it could build a 6,000-seat concert hall, city sources confirmed Wednesday. Company executives met with economic development officials and some city landowners this summer, said an official familiar with the meeting. The company is in the preliminary stages of exploring where a venue might be located. News of the inquiry was first reported...

The children do not know that the music is about war, yet they stomp along with the fury. A young boy shakes his hands as though they have caught fire, keeping tempo with the violin's shrieks. A girl in a pink romper, no older than 6, jumps to her feet to conduct from the 12th row. And at the abrupt end, the children wail without inhibition, because this is how one feels after hearing Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet; this is how one feels when dropped from its dizzying pull. And when...

A sampling of choral events taking place in the area: Choral Arts Society , "Joyeux Noel," Dec. 19-20, 24, Kennedy Center Concert Hall Cantate Chamber Singers and Folger Consort , "In Dulci Jubilo," Dec. 19-20, Folger Library Washington Chorus , Handel's "Messiah" with the NSO, Dec. 19-20, Kennedy Center Concert Hall Gay Men's Chorus of Washington , "Snow White and 175 Fairies," Dec. 19-20, Lisner Auditorium ...

The accolades, the smears: Lang Lang has heard them all. Critics tire of his skyward gazes. Musicians scrutinize his technique. Novices know him as the world's most dazzling pianist, the Liszt of the digital era. They know his "Flight of the Bumblebee" on an iPad, his incessant Twitter updates, and that he's inspired 45 million children in China to take to the keys. Over the past decade, at one time or another, Lang has embodied many and various assessments. An exuberant young showman, he weathered the praise...

One time, George Hobart was at the Kennedy Center when he spied someone he knew: Ken Burns. George had been director of documentary photographs at the Library of Congress, and Ken Burns was Ken Burns, a filmmaker who uses documentary photographs the way McDonald's uses beef patties. It was the Kennedy Center Honors or some other star-studded affair. George was in an odd position. He knew Ken Burns, but he could not approach Ken Burns. George was on duty, wearing the cranberry blazer of the Kennedy Center usher corps,...

The largest balalaika orchestra outside of Russia is based in Arlington. The balalaika orchestra that won the international competition "Music Vladivostok 2007" is also based in Arlington. They are two different orchestras. And apart from their instrument, they don't have much in common. The balalaika is a triangular Russian folk instrument, like a three-stringed guitar. It's ubiquitous in Russia, rare here, and generally thought of in both countries as an emblem of ethnic music, even kitsch.

If you call a building "Gehryesque," even people who don't follow architecture closely will know what you mean. It is a building by Frank Gehry, the world's most famous living architect, and it probably looks like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, a curved and sinuous space wrapped in Gehry's trademark shimmering titanium. Few architects are so easily reducible to a visual idea, and so completely defined by their name and their style. But as two new buildings open -- one a library at Princeton University, the other an expansion of a...

The children do not know that the music is about war, yet they stomp along with the fury. A young boy shakes his hands as though they have caught fire, keeping tempo with the violin's shrieks. A girl in a pink romper, no older than 6, jumps to her feet to conduct from the 12th row. And at the abrupt end, the children wail without inhibition, because this is how one feels after hearing Shostakovich's Eighth String Quartet; this is how one feels when dropped from its dizzying...

Diffidence is not a characteristic often associated with concert pianists. But Brian Ganz exudes a kind of thoughtful gentleness. He is at once tall, good-looking and unobtrusive, as if wanting not to impose too much on the attentions of others. These qualities make him a good teacher, a sensitive performer, and a perhaps indifferent careerist. "I've always felt that if I was actually making music; teaching, which I adore; and able to support myself, that was enough success for me," he says.

In cantorial circles, Netanel Hershtik is a superstar. Cantor of the Hampton Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., and with 13 generations of cantors in his family behind him, the art of Middle Eastern microtonal ornamentation is in his blood. He and his synagogue's 12-voice male choir, assisted by the Amernet String Quartet and pianist Alan Mason, offered an evening of "Cantorial Masterpieces" as the first of this season's Pro Musica Hebraica concerts (chaired by The Washington...

They arrive late, under cover of darkness, pulling up to the Kennedy Center in their rented white Ford Fusion just as the last patrons are heading home. Six nights a week for six weeks in a row this fall, Richard Marchand and Daniel Fortin have been the center's most regular visitors. A security guard greets them at the door and ushers them to the Concert Hall, where, shortly after 11 p.m., the two quiet and unassuming French Canadians start their workday. First, a coffee.

The accolades, the smears: Lang Lang has heard them all. Critics tire of his skyward gazes. Musicians scrutinize his technique. Novices know him as the world's most dazzling pianist, the Liszt of the digital era. They know his "Flight of the Bumblebee" on an iPad, his incessant Twitter updates, and that he's inspired 45 million children in China to take to the keys. Over the past decade, at one time or another, Lang has embodied many and various assessments. An exuberant young showman, he weathered...

Classical music presenters sometimes try to bill concerts as big, unforgettable events. That approach can be problematic if your goal is to cultivate an audience that wants to come again and again, week after week. For most people, one or two big unforgettable events a year is quite enough — not every subscription concert needs to be unforgettable. But there are some monuments of classical music that simply are big events, like Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. That is a massive...

THU 25 Washington International Horse Show The six-day event continues with more than 500 horses and riders in competition, plus exhibitors, vendors and auctions. Highlights by day: Thursday evening, a gamblers'-choice costume class; Friday-Saturday, hunter and jumper phases of the equitation finals; Friday evening, puissance (high jump); Saturday, kids' day (10 a.m.-2 p.m.) and President's Cup Grand Prix in the evening; Sunday, ponies and regional hunter finals. Thursday-Saturday 7 a.m.-5 p.m....

MARYLAND OPERA STUDIO Mozart's "Cosi fan tutte," Friday and Saturday at 7:30, Sunday at 3. Kay Theatre, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, Route 193 and Stadium Drive, College Park. 301-405-2787. ANNAPOLIS CHORALE Verdi's "Aida," Friday at 7:30, Saturday at 8. Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, 801 Chase St., Annapolis. 410-280-5640 or 410-263-5544. ANNAPOLIS OPERA "Hansel & Gretel," Saturday at 10:30 a.m. Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, 801 Chase St., Annapolis.

Aretha and Oprah at the Kennedy Center on the same day? We know what you are thinking: It is going to be crazy. But we are ready to help you make the most of it. Tickets for Winfrey's show taping are gone, but free tickets to Franklin's "Let Freedom Ring" show in the 2,400-seat Concert Hall on Monday at 6 p.m. will be distributed beginning Monday at 4 p.m. The Kennedy Center will open its doors at 10 a.m., but dress warmly: The line will start forming...

Gaetano Donizetti 's "Lucia di Lammermoor" is one of the most violent melodramas of the operatic stage. Yet this tragic work also overflows with robust and inventive melodies that audiences never forget. On Sunday, Opera International 's production of Lucia at Strathmore's concert hall in Bethesda was a winning one, capturing the hatred between two families hopelessly locked in tribal warfare with the forces of intrigue, revenge and murderous rage dooming two young lovers in Romeo-and-Juliet...

You may not have heard of Hans Gal. But the American conductor Kenneth Woods thinks you should have. Gal was a widely respected and performed composer in the 1920s, but the Nazis drove him out of Germany, and though he continued writing, teaching and composing in Scotland until his death in 1987, his reputation never quite recovered. Elegant, adeptly constructed, and unashamedly tonal, even beautiful, his music hearkens back to a bygone tradition of Viennese late romanticism that...