With the new Music Center at Strathmore open for business in suburban Washington, D.C., featuring regular appearances by the Baltimore Symphony, a unique head-to-head orchestral competition is shaping up in the nation’s capital. “Indeed, with the Baltimore Symphony’s incursion into the back yard of the National Symphony Orchestra, the capital area becomes the first metropolis in the country in almost 80 years to present listeners with a choice of programs by two full-size, full-time, regularly scheduled orchestras every week of the season.”