At the Bainbridge Performing Arts Mostly Music series it’s OK to talk about the performance during the show. In fact it’s encouraged.

The series is a conversation, using music and discussion to enhance understanding of and appreciation for classical music. Don’t you wish someone had explained Mozart to you? Or Philip Glass?

Feb. 26 the series features “The Language of Music, Especially for Young Listeners” and features performers Thomas Monk, violin; Barbara Deppe, violincello; and James Quitslund, piano and moderator.

The musical conversation begins with one of the most recognizable pieces in the classical canon, commonly known as the “Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.” But do you know the real name and composer? It’s by the waltz king, Richard Strauss, a tone poem called “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”

“All components of the musical language — harmony, melody and rhythm — are heard here emerging as if at the creation of the world,” Quitslund writes in the program notes.

It will be a considerably scaled down version of the piece, which uses a full orchestra for the “Space Odyssey” take, but the drama should still come across.

From that opening the program moves back in time to how these components can be used to “carry a more elaborate and personal kind of musical thought.”

Opera divas Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas will “visit” via recording, with the famous mad scene from Bellini’s “I Puritani.”

“The rest of the program is devoted to the exploration of how great composers construct a very large edifice out of the elements of musical language we have discovered in the Strauss and Bellini excerpts,” Quitslund said. “To demonstrate how this works, and why performers make certain interpretive choices rather than others, we will present an uninterrupted performance of the third trio in Beethoven’s ‘Opus One,’ his debut on the European scene, and a work of extraordinary energy and depth.”

The Mostly Music series is now in its third season of combining professional-level performance of musical masterpieces with “discussions of music history and the social and cultural contexts of music in different times and places,” Quitslund said.

“The Language of Music” will be performed 4 p.m. Feb. 26 at The Playhouse, 200 Madison Ave. N, Bainbridge Island.

Tickets are $12 general admission, music lovers 18 and younger are free when accompanied by an adult. wu