Tonight’s Pick: Artist-in-Residence Chamber Music Collective at the Strathmore

Andrew Luse’s “Classics on the Rocks” concert series seeks to lure younger audiences with that magical summer combination of free + outdoors + pulled pork BBQ. This Wednesday’s performance by the Strathmore Artist-in-Residence Chamber Music Collective will begin with Antonín Dvorák’s Second Piano Quintet, for which the Czech composer simply rewrote his lousy first piano quintet with some Bohemian folk flourishes. (This tradition clearly inspired L.A.’s Youth Brigade to rewrite their entire first album, Sound and Fury, with a punk version of the “Duke of Earl” song.) Like Dvorák, Béla Bartók took inspiration from his country’s folksongs; however Bartók’s Hungarian peasants must have been dadaists or Five Percenters to have inspired his Fourth String Quartet, which veers wildly between major and minor keys and is structured on Fibonacci’s sequence. The evening concludes with Argentine composer Ástor Piazzolla, whose Historie du Tango whisks the audience away to the charming turn-of-the-century whorehouses of Buenos Aires. The performance begins at 7 p.m. at Strathmore Hall’s Gudelsky Pavilion, 10701 Rockville Pike, Bethesda. Free. (301) 581-5100. —Mike Paarlberg

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