Concert Series: Masterworks of Three Centuries
This chronologically wide-ranging eight-concert series begins in early October with the first of two appearances by the Smithsonian Consort of Viols, playing music by the Elizabethan composer Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger and William Lawes, a favorite of Charles I.

In early November, members of the Smithsonian Academy Orchestra celebrate Antonín Dvorák with two captivating works of 1878. Later that month, the Smithsonian Chamber Players offer a program of German music from around the turn of the 18th century by Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, Dieterich Buxtehude, and Johann Sebastian Bach.

At the end of January, the four-hands fortepiano team of Naoko Takao and SCMS director Kenneth Slowik present the first of the season’s two Schubertiads.

In late February, the full Smithsonian Academy Orchestra ventures into the second half of the 19th century with the D major Serenade of Johannes Brahms, plus Haydn’s ever-popular “Surprise” Symphony.

The Smithsonian Consort of Viols returns in March with a concert of music by John Ward, revered up until the time Henry Purcell, and Purcell himself, who penned the last—and arguably some of the greatest—essays in the contrapuntal consort genre.

Catherine Manson, concertmaster of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and Kenneth Slowik perform sonatas of J. S. Bach in mid-April, and the season concludes mid-May with Schubert’s magnificent String Quintet in C Major, given by the Smithsonian Chamber Players on five Stradivarius instruments from the Museum’s rich collection.