Hats off to the Opera Company of Philadelphia, who announced their 2012-13 season yesterday. The company’s five productions include the East Coast premiere of Kevin Puts’s new “Silent Night,” which premiered at the Minnesota Opera in November; Britten’s “Owen Wingrave,” in a coproduction with the Curtis Institute, and Thomas Ades’s “Powder Her Face.” In short, following the current season’s final opera in June, a coproduction of Nico Muhly’s new “Dark Sisters,” the Philadelphia Opera is putting its money where its mouth is in terms of investing in new work — something partly possible by going a step down in scale and putting on some of these new pieces in smaller theaters. The season includes a couple of chestnuts — “La boheme” and ”The Magic Flute” — but it also subverts what’s become the standard small American opera-company recipe of one new work, one less-known 19th-century piece (“less known” often meaning “bel canto”), and three warhorses. (Heidi Waleson reviewed both “Dark Sisters” and “Silent Night” in the Wall Street Journal after their world premieres last fall.)

Another notable initiative in the news yesterday: the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is creating its own version of the YouTube Symphony by holding a video talent search. Viewers can vote on the video auditions; the top four will get auditions with the orchestra’s music director, Manfred Honeck, and a chance to play a concerto with the orchestra in November/December. Submit your video now.

And finally, a new initiative for opera fans from WFMT: on Saturday, the Chicago-based station is offering an all-day seminar on great opera voices with Henry Fogel, who, though his career has been mainly with orchestras (running the Chicago Symphony and the League of American Orchestras), is one of the great opera aficionados on the planet. The seminar, from 9 am to 4 pm, was conceived as a live event, but is now offering live streaming as well, for a $20 fee.

Above: the YouTube Symphony’s second iteration demonstrated that classical music and YouTube auditions can make beautiful things happen. Now, the Pittsburgh Symphony is setting out to find a concert soloist through a similar process.

Charles T. Downey attended the NSO concert last night and found much to like in the playing of Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg under Christoph Eschenbach: Christoph Eschenbach and National Symphony put special spin on familiar works.

Downey was effectively on the Post’s piano beat this week. He was not wildly impressed by Konstantin Soukhovetski’s recital on Sunday; and even less pleased by Kathleen Supove’s “Exploding Piano” offering at the Atlas on Tuesday night.

Web extra: addendum to the NSO review. Downey writes:

At one point in the emotionally charged third movement of Bruckner’s ninth symphony last night, the orchestra’s principal oboist, Nicholas Stovall, stood up and hurriedly walked off stage. Other listeners may have reacted with the same surprise as I did, having no memory of an off-stage oboe part in Bruckner’s ninth symphony (a suspicion borne out by a subsequent look at the score). This morning Patricia O’Kelly, the Managing Director of Media Relations for the NSO, was able to confirm that Stovall “was overtaken by stomach flu” mid-movement and had to leave. The other members of the oboe section scrambled to cover the part. Anecdotal evidence indicates that a fast-moving stomach virus has been going around the city this week, including in my own home. I was a little worried that, if the virus got me next, I would be the one having to leave mid-concert. No decision has been made yet about the oboe section for tonight’s performance.

Cell phone disruptions at concerts are so, well, last month. (And after all, Alan Gilbert’s stopping the New York Philharmonic for a patron’s cell phone alarm was merely the most recent iteration of an ongoing theme.) Even variations on the Nokia ring tone are passe; the violist Lukas Kmit, whose improvised coda on the ubiquitous phrase went all over YouTube in January (see below), was echoing something I heard Nigel Kennedy do at a house party in Switzerland a good twelve years ago, back when that Nokia ring tone was one of the ONLY ring tones.

In any case, on Friday, an NSO patron decided to disturb the concert the old-fashioned way: on foot, and with her voice, with no electronic enhancement whatsoever. At the end of the first movement of the Beethoven Third, a woman began talking to herself at the back of the auditorium, rose, and began making her way down the aisle toward Christoph Eschenbach on the podium. According to an eyewitness, it took a number of ushers to corral her and escort her away. A Kennedy Center spokesperson said that the patron in question had wanted to say something to the Maestro. The ushers helped her find a taxi to get home.

Get that woman a cell phone.

Above, the violist Lukas Kmit became a YouTube hero for his quick-thinking impromptu on the Nokia ring tone. Too bad YouTube was unclear on just what that instrument was that he’s playing. Edited to replace now-defunct video with one that works.

Susan Graham, alas, was felled by laryngitis, and her Saturday concert at the Kennedy Center was cancelled at the last minute. (The Washington Performing Arts Society didn’t find out until 11:30 in the morning before a 3 p.m. performance.) Details of rescheduling are still pending, but WPAS is also offering ticket-holders a full refund or exchange for tickets to another performance.

Even without this recital, however, this was one of the most jam-packed weekends for classical concerts of the season.

Patrick Rucker was favorably impressed by Jonathan Biss on Saturday night, although observing that he is neither Schnabel nor Brendel.

Charles T. Downey found that the Cygnus Ensemble’s heartfelt tribute to Fritz Kreisler inadvertently pointed out that the great violinist wasn’t up to much as a composer.

Joan Reinthaler checked out the Tchaikovsky St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra at George Mason University on Saturday, whose identity the New York Times questioned last year, and found it to be, as one might expect, a decent mid-level orchestra.

Reinthaler also heard ECCO (the East Coast Chamber Orchestra), the virtuosic chamber ensemble of friends with day jobs as soloists and orchestras around the country, and found them to be the epitome of passionate refinement. (With this, she nails a coupling of traits I think one hears a lot from professional classical music ensembles.)

Sunday’s concert reviews will follow in tomorrow’s paper. Even so, there were a number of notable concerts we were unable to cover. Did anyone see any concert they thought was worthy of mention? Post your thoughts in the comments section.

Philip Glass turned 75 last week, and there were celebrations and commemorations all over the place, notably the exclusive release of his 9th Symphony on iTunes and its American premiere performance at Carnegie Hall. (The release quickly went to #1 on the iTunes classical chart, and even broke into the upper reaches of the overall chart.)

But the biggest commemoration in the Washington area comes from an unexpected source: the Virginia Opera, whose production of Glass’s Orphee opened in Norfolk on January 28 and comes to Fairfax this weekend.

Opera in Virginia appears to be in a good way these days — at least, there’s more of it. In an article this weekend (For Virginia opera lovers, it’s a whole new scene), I took a brief look at the state’s two opera companies: one approaching its 40th anniversary, and one newly created in the wake of the public schism between the company and its long-time general director, Peter Mark. Mark has now founded his own company, Lyric Opera Virginia, which seems to be finding its own audience and has had success with its first two productions of this maiden season.

As for the Virginia Opera, it’s bringing an exciting production of a strong work — an opera that won over the company’s consulting artistic advisor, Robin Thompson, when he saw it at Glimmerglass in 2007. And for those who are unconvinced by Glass’s reputation, the composer’s 75th birthday is a fine time to consider a reappraisal of one of the most important figures in today’s music world.

Above, snippets of “Orphee” in a production from Linz as introduced on Austrian television, which describes the music as “at once contemporary and familiar.”