As more and more details of the 2002-2003 season come in, it looks like area music lovers will find plenty of enticements. Here are a few of them:
The Baltimore Chamber Orchestra will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a mix of the familiar and off-beat. Founding music director Anne Harrigan, who just announced she will be stepping down in two years, will get things started in October at Goucher College's Kraushaar Auditorium with Copland's Appalachian Spring (which was played in the ensemble's inaugural concert) and two concertos for two pianos and orchestra - Mozart's and Poulenc's.
The soloists in the latter will be the husband-and-wife team of Valentina Lisitsa and Alexei Kuznetsoff, whose triumph at the 1991 Murray Dranoff International Two Piano Competition put them quickly and boldly on the map.
In February, the orchestra will take a dual look at Mozart - his Marriage of Figaro Overture will be complemented by Tchaikovsky's elegant homage to the composer, the Orchestral Suite No. 4, Mozartiana. Two other backward-glancing works, Stravinksy's Pulcinella and Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin, will also be on the bill.
Jonathan Carney, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's new concertmaster, will be the soloist in Vivaldi's evergreen Four Seasons in March on a program that includes two fine British pieces for strings, Vaughan Williams' Five Variants of `Dives and Lazarus' and Elgar's Introduction and Allegro. Isaiah Jackson will be the guest conductor.
Harrigan will be back on the podium in May to lead an eclectic sampling of her own favorites - Mozart's Symphony No. 39 and works by George Butterworth and Anton Webern. Chris Norman, the wooden flute virtuoso, will be the guest artist in his own compositions.
The BCO season also offers a family concert in November at Goucher, a holiday program in December at Second Presbyterian Church, and a night of silent film comedies at the Senator Theatre with live orchestral accompaniment in April.
Call 410-308-0402.
Blast from the past
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, will continue to put its distinctive mark on the regional music scene with a dynamic lineup for 2002-2003.
Highlights include a return by Opera Lafayette, which will follow up on this season's concert version of Gluck's Orphee with another rare blast from the past, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, in February, again featuring remarkable tenor Jean-Paul Fouchecourt.
