Hello! This week, we led the arts section of our dead-tree edition with Mike Paarlberg‘s look at the beginning of the Christoph Eschenbach era at the National Symphony Orchestra. In this Sunday’s WaPo Magazine, classical critic Anne Midgette has her lengthy take on the same topic—-which includes an interview with the maestro himself. But his opinion of his troubled tenure helming the Philadelphia Orchestra from 2003 to 2008 hasn’t changed:

After a few years, the orchestra management polled the Philadelphia players and let Eschenbach know that the majority weren’t happy with his leadership. Eschenbach’s own view is that the management was influenced by a few malcontents and negative reviews from one of the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s classical music critics. “This was a mismanagement,” he says. “And now everybody knows.” Whatever happened, it led to Eschenbach’s second contract not being renewed.

I had trouble getting through Ann Hornaday‘s profile of Carey Mulligan, but wanted to aggregate it here as an excuse to 1) point you to Tricia Olszewski‘s review of the Mulligan-starring Never Let Me Go; and 2) mention that I am really, really disappointed with the new Belle & Sebastian record (more on this later, I’m sure) but that the song “Write About Love,” which features some guest vocals from Mulligan, is really lovely. Even though I don’t quite buy it when she sings about hating her job.

MOVING ON: Lots of stuff to do this weekend. Sonic Circuits wraps up! Check back here later for more Sonic Circuits previews. FreeFest! I will be there with a small army of WCP people. More on this later! The National Book Festival! Here’s TBD’s take; look for ours (you guessed it) later today.

Speaking of Sonic Circuits, the Sockets Records blog has some cool video from last night’s show with US Girls, Black w/ Bear, and Tone Ghosting. Here’s US Girls:

The Going Out Gurus report that the upcoming Night of Free Theater won’t include any D.C. performances. Boo-urns.

You should probably read the shit-ton of great posts we had on Arts Desk yesterday, and note this: arts seems to be infecting the rest of the WCP site. TO WIT: Yesterday Moe Tkacik brilliantly skewered the rightish intellectualish types crying foul (not always honestly!) about Jonathan Franzen‘s Freedom. And earlier in the week, Lydia DePillis recommended you see The Other City, a film that chronicles every corner of D.C. where the story of AIDs plays out.

Last night I saw Caribou at the Black Cat, and the group made tripped-out, shimmery dance music to a projected background that basically looked like SpinArt. The nerd-heavy audience got down.