In its 43rd season of artistic life, the Annapolis Symphony will be an orchestra in transition.
Leslie Dunner, the charismatic maestro whose buoyant, supple way with a score yielded so many fine concerts during his five-year tenure, will not be back for a sixth season.
Instead, the ensemble will entertain five talented guest conductors, three of whom have past or present ties to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Some intrigue could hang in the Maryland Hall air along with the music, as a couple of next season's visitors might be asked back to compete during the 2004-2005 Conductor's Derby season, in which each of the candidates to succeed Dunner as music director presides over a subscription concert.
Whatever the stakes, whatever the handicapping, this much is clear: Some of the most incandescent masterworks ever composed will be played in Annapolis next season. And regardless of any lingering disaffection among ASO players and supporters over November's board of trustees decision to end Dunner's affiliation with the orchestra, talented conductors will be on hand.
The most inventive program of 2003-04 is the opener, an evening of concertos to be presided over by Daniel Hege, a former associate conductor of the Baltimore Symphony who now leads the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra.
Nava Perlman, daughter of violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman, will join Hege for K. 466 in D minor, certainly one of the most profound of Mozart's celestial piano concertos.
Perlman's colleagues, violinist Giora Schmidt and cellist Zuill Bailey, will join for Brahms' infrequently performed Double Concerto, then all three soloists will unite for the sparkling (and rare) Triple Concerto by Beethoven.
The concerto repertoire also will be well served by Jon Nakamatsu, a Van Cliburn Piano Competition gold medalist who played such a terrific Emperor Concerto of Beethoven with Dunner and the ASO last season. This time around, Nakamatsu will join Emil DeCou, associate conductor of Washington's National Symphony, for Schumann's rapturously romantic Piano Concerto.
Other soloists will include pianist Stewart Goodyear, who will join Philadelphia Orchestra assistant conductor Rossen Milanov for the sumptuous emotionalism of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2; violinist Gareth Johnson, who will play Max Bruch's sizzling G minor Concerto with Lara Weber, associate conductor of the Baltimore Symphony; and violinist Dylana Jenson, who will conclude the season in May by joining her husband, David Lockington, conductor of Michigan's Grand Rapids Symphony, for Shostakovich's Concerto No. 1.
Lockington was a Baltimore Symphony associate before filling orchestral posts in New Mexico, New York state and Michigan. He has elected to conduct the season's only contemporary work, Global Warming, a luminous piece blending classical and folk influences by the African-American composer Michael Abels.
Milanov will essay Elgar's Enigma Variations, a descriptive set of musical portraits of the composer's friends, all revolving a melodic theme that remains a mystery to this day. Though one of the great orchestral showpieces, Enigma is a work of tremendous emotional depth, especially the Nimrod Variation, as noble and glowing an interlude as exists anywhere.
The rest of the season will deal us a hand of three "fives."
Lara Weber draws Sibelius' Symphony No. 5; Emil DeCou, the quivering intensity of Tchaikovsky's Fifth; and Lockington finishes things with the most triumphal season-ender of them all, Beethoven's Fifth.
