Bach

Last night's concert by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Meyerhoff Hall may have found a solution to the aging of the symphonic audience. Before the concert began, this listener and several friends noticed an unusual number of teen-age girls in the lobby. And one had to wonder if the reason for their appearance was the piano soloist, Stephen Prutsman.Prutsman, a recent graduate of the Peabody Conservatory who has won prizes in several important international competitions, greatly resembles the young Mikhail Baryshnikov -- except that he is taller, blonder and may have even bluer eyes.

Peabody Conservatory of Music welcomed its gorgeous new Holtkamp pipe organ to the beautifully redone North Hall with a series of free recitals this weekend by the longtime head of its organ department, Donald Sutherland.The hall has been renamed Leith Symington Griswold Hall, after a $2 million gift from her son, Benjamin H. Griswold IV (of BT Alex. Brown Inc.) and his wife, Wendy.The organ itself, which cost $668,000 (of which $600,000 by Lyman and Nancy Woodson Spire), is a beauty with its brushed gold and silver pipes in an immense wooden case painted cream.

Richard Goode took a sabbatical last year, and the fruits of that break in his schedule should be apparent when he performs Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 27 (K.595)" this week in Meyerhoff Hall with David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.Because it is Mozart's final concerto and was among the last major works he completed before his death, Goode says, it's usually interpreted as a death-haunted valediction to a genre the composer had made his own as he had no other."But it is not as tragic as some of Mozart's earlier piano concertos," Goode says in a telephone interview.

If the names Francois Chauvon, Jacques Hotteterre and Marin Marais don't ring any bells, check out next weekend's "Music in the Great Hall" concert. Works by those three late-17th and early-18th century composers, along with a more familiar fellow named Johann Sebastian Bach, will be played on instruments of the period by a group called Tibiades. The ensemble -- John Moran on viola da gamba, Collin St. Marten on traverse flute, Billy Simms on theorbo -- takes its name from a collection of pieces by Chauvon published in 1717.

GIRLS PLAY LACROSSE in North Carroll, thanks to Joe Bach, whose enthusiasm for the sport has attracted players from age 4 through adult to pick up a stick and run with it."Some kids are petrified. It may take 10 minutes to get them on the field and then they'll never come in, it's that contagious," says Bach."Come out and see what we do. Most parents think it's a full body contact sport, but the girls [game] is nothing like that."In addition to organizing intramural teams for the second year, Bach started a lacrosse clinic two weeks ago. It meets Sundays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the East Gym of North Carroll Middle School.

In the annals of ungratefulness, the Margrave of Brandenburg retains a place of distinction. Upon receipt of six painstakingly hand-written music scores sent to him in 1721, accompanied by a gift tag bursting with obsequious prose, this brother of the Prussian king put them in a drawer and ignored them. Didn't even send a simple "Thank You, Peasant" note. At least the margrave didn't go in for re-gifting. Otherwise, the world might never have discovered the Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach.

It will be "classics to Broadway" once again when the Annapolis Chorale takes the stage for its 2000-2001 season. Maestro J. Ernest Green has put together one of Maryland's most versatile choirs and the group's tradition of multifaceted excellence will be expanded upon in the months to come. The first of the chorale's classical undertakings will be the ever-mysterious Requiem Mass composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as he lay dying in December 1791. Musicologists quibble over how much of the version that comes down to us today is Mozart's handiwork.

Without P.D.Q. Bach -- "the last and least of J. S. Bach's 20-odd children" -- Peter Schickele thought he'd have an easy year.It hasn't worked out that way for the 56-year-old Schickele -- the creator of the fictitious P.D.Q. -- who took an "extended sabbatical" last year after 25 years of touring as the equally fictitious Professor Peter Schickele, the nutty chairman of the department of music pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota in Hoople and P.D.Q.'s "discoverer." Schickele's tours and his 14 records -- all of them best-sellers and three of them Grammy winners -- made him the clown prince of classical music.

Without P.D.Q. Bach -- "the last and least of J. S. Bach's 20-odd children" -- Peter Schickele thought he'd have an easy year.It hasn't worked out that way for the 56-year-old Schickele -- the creator of the fictitious P.D.Q. -- who took an "extended sabbatical" last year after 25 years of touring as the equally fictitious Professor Peter Schickele, the nutty chairman of the department of music pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota in Hoople and P.D.Q.'s "discoverer." Schickele's tours and his 14 records -- all of them best-sellers and three of them Grammy winners -- made him the clown prince of classical music.

The first time Matt Haimovitz took the stage at the late and lamented New York club CBGB, where the Talking Heads and the Ramones got their first big boosts, he didn't feel entirely welcome. "I was sandwiched between four or five punk bands, and I could feel a little resistance," the Israeli-born, Montreal-based Haimovitz says of that night in 2002. "I think the audience came to see if I would survive." The unease wasn't surprising -- CBGB hadn't ever presented a classical cellist. "I played one Bach suite," Haimovitz says, "and I could tell the bands were like, `OK, kid, get lost,' But I wanted to stay as long as I could.