Hey kids, come and get that scary modern music! Saturday night, Christopher Taylor plays Ligeti's ecstatic and demonic Etudes at Miller Theatre. Sunday, the International Contemporary Ensemble gives the last of a series of performances of Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King (in a production "drawing inspiration from 'videocam diary' culture"). Monday, remember River Phoenix. Tuesday, the Chamber Music Society presents two bone-chilling late Shostakovich works, the Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok and the Viola Sonata. Wednesday, Philip Glass's Eightieth Symphony — no, sorry, Eighth — chugs into BAM. Thursday, Gidon Kremer, whose new ECM recording of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas is extraordinary, delves into Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 5 at the Philharmonic. Or, if you want something a little less fraught, New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini accompanies Nancy Armstrong in songs by the excellent Boston-based composer Scott Wheeler. A major event on Friday, Nov. 4: the fearless Flux Quartet plays the string quartets of Giacinto Scelsi, one of the masters of the late twentieth century. Same night, the Chicago Symphony plays this week's new Elliott Carter composition. And, Sunday after next, the Meredith Monk marathon at Zankel brings together Monk herself, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Bruce Brubaker and Ursula Oppens, the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, DJ Spooky, John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, and a certain Björk.
