Ancedotal evidence suggests that these Agendas are prompting at least a few NYC'ers to attend the concerts in question — a disturbing development. Don't sue me if they suck. Tuesday: the rock-solid young pianist Jonathan Biss plays Berg, Mozart, Schubert, and Kirchner at Zankel — three Austrians and a guy from Brooklyn. Thursday: the Ba Ban Chinese Music Society unfurls works by Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Bun-Ching Lam, and Huang Ruo at Greenwich House Arts, a wonderful rickety old place on Barrow Street in the West Village. Or, if you're in the mood for hilarity at the expense of VH1's squawking pop-culture commentators, see The Name of This Play is Talking Heads at UNDER St. Marks (through March 26; nepotism alert). Over the weekend I'll be in Copenhagen for the premiere of Poul Ruders' Kafka's Trial, but otherwise I'd be checking out three Carnegie concerts by the Vienna Phil, which, after a few dullish tours, has a genius at the helm: Mariss Jansons. (Jansons was the conductor who lost points during the NY Phil's last maestro tryouts when he asked the orchestra to rehearse during the rehearsal.) On the new-music beat, Relâche, the downtownish group from Philadelphia, appears Friday at Symphony Space, and on Saturday the Fireworks Ensemble lights up the suddenly hot-hot-hot Tenri Cultural Institute with a program entitled "Surrealism in Music?" Come Monday there's a free show by Tactus, the Manhattan School of Music Contemporary Ensemble, whose explosive rendition of Michael Gordon's Decasia last fall is still ringing in my damaged ears. Presumably they'll be fully clothed this time; for Decasia, they performed shirtless / in bras. (Somehow I forgot to mention that fact in my review.) Notations are provided by Steve Reich (Proverb, Drumming), Martin Bresnick (his Der Signal, for ensemble, narrator, and shadow puppets), and Julia Wolfe (Early That Summer). Next week I'll catch up with Rosenkavalier at the Met, which opens on Friday. Laura Aikin, the Sophie, was the luminous still point of the SF Opera's never-to-be-forgotten production of St. Francis two seasons ago. To quote Hugo von Hofmannsthal, time is weird stuff.
