Beethoven

Under music director J. Ernest Green, the Annapolis Chorale's 187 singers joined two soloists and the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra in a transcendent performance of Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem last weekend at the first classical concert of the chorale's 35th season. This was preceded by Green conducting the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra in Beethoven's "Symphony Number 1 in C Major." Green offered an entertaining, informative pre-concert lecture about Beethoven's first symphony and Brahms' requiem, likening the construction of the four parts of a symphony to creating an essay.

The Baltimore Chamber Orchestra opened its 25th anniversary season Tuesday night with the kind of imaginative programming that music director Markand Thakar has made a specialty. In between familiar Beethoven pieces were two rarities by African-born composers and a movie theme by John Williams - a neat balancing act. Thakar's choices for this concert and the rest of the season were inspired by the ensemble's milestone. He looked back at 1984, when conductor Anne Harrigan and her intrepid colleagues launched the BCO, and took note of what was going on in the world.

Few Baltimoreans -- with such significant exceptions as H.L. Mencken, Cal Ripken and John Waters -- achieve fame, celebrity and success without leaving town.Consider this short list of those who found fame by departing: Oprah, Barry Levinson, Eubie Blake, Frederick Douglass, Babe Ruth, Billie Holliday, Wallis Warfield Simpson, Cab Calloway, Jada Pinkett, Frank Zappa, Philip Glass and Spiro Agnew.It's time to rack up another name: David Zinman, former music director of the Baltimore Symphony, who left at the end of the 1997-98 season.

With the releases of Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 and No. 9 on single discs and all nine symphonies in a boxed set, the Beethoven project of David Zinman and Zurich's Tonhalle Orchestra is now completed.This is, as reviews of previous single issues in The Sun have noted, the world-premiere recording of these works in the New Baerenreiter Edition, the latest scholarly edition of the composer's original texts. With some exceptions -- such as additional woodwind trills at the beginning of No. 2 and an extended, more elaborately embellished passage for solo oboe in No. 5 -- most of the research that has gone into this edition will not be audible to the average listener.

The more I see of Annapolis Symphony conductor Leslie Dunner, the more I like him.The "Eroica" Symphony he gave us Saturday night was admirable, and then some. If you like your Beethoven lean, brusque and mean, Dunner is not your man. His "Eroica" was lithe and buoyant, yet when the animating passion of Beethoven's vision rose to the surface, I heard no lack of feeling.Everywhere you looked, there was elegance. The accents that dot "Eroica's" score were suavely pinged, not clobbered with abandon.

Murray Perahia's piano playing is so natural in its phrasing, so beautiful in its sonority and so unmarred by idiosyncrasies that it is sometimes possible to forget what an original musician he can be. This was the case in his appearance Saturday in the Kennedy Center's Concert Hall -- with a program that featured genuinely revelatory performances of works by Beethoven and Schubert.Perhaps the high point of the program was Perahia's performance of Schubert's C Minor Sonata. This work, with which the printed program concluded, is often compared to (and interpreted like)

All I knew about George Pehlivanian until yesterday was that he was young -- he is in his early 30s -- and that he was scheduled to lead this week's Baltimore Symphony concerts. After hearing him in Meyerhoff Hall last night lead the orchestra in Saint-Saens' Symphony No. 3 in C Minor (the so-called "Organ Symphony") and accompany violinist Elmar Oliveira in Beethoven's Concerto in D, I know enough to want him hear him again.That he is a talented conductor was apparent from the the first notes of the program-opening Beethoven concerto.

The more I see of Annapolis Symphony conductor Leslie Dunner, the more I like him.The "Eroica" symphony he gave us Saturday night was admirable, and then some. If you like your Beethoven lean, brusque and mean, Dunner is not your man. His "Eroica" was lithe and buoyant, yet when the animating passion of Beethoven's vision rose to the surface, I heard no lack of feeling.Everywhere you looked, there was elegance. The accents that dot "Eroica's" score were suavely pinged, not clobbered with abandon.

Two years ago Alan Gilbert stepped on to the Baltimore Symphony podium as a last-minute substitute for guest conductor Mario Venzago. Gilbert, then in his late 20s and an assistant conductor with the Cleveland Orchestra, was -- except to concert managers whose business it is to keep track of such matters -- an unknown quantity. But he gave a strong account of himself in a program that included the subtle and hard-to-put-across Schumann Symphony No. 2 and the difficult-to-accompany Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2.When he returned to Meyerhoff Hall Friday evening to conduct the Baltimore Symphony in an all-Beethoven program, he was not a substitute, but a rising star whose other recent engagements include appearances with the Boston Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic.

This week should prove an embarrassment of riches musically.Tonight at 8: 15, the newly formed Towson University Chamber Orchestra makes its debut in the university's Center for the Arts Concert Hall. With Mark McCoy on the podium, the orchestra will perform Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Milhaud's "La Creation du Monde" and works by Stravinsky.Tickets, at $4 and $6, are available at the Center for the Arts box office or by calling 410-830-2787.Wednesday night at 8 p.m., Benjamin Pasternack, the newest member of the Peabody Conservatory's piano faculty, will give his first solo recital in Friedberg Hall.

All orchestras need to get back to their roots periodically, putting aside the big-gun Tchaikovsky and Mahler works and exploring the more intimately scaled world of Haydn. He was, after all, the "father of the symphony," the composer who created the mold and filled it more than 100 times. Haydn's symphonic works aren't played as regularly as they should be around here, which is one reason why the latest Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program is well worth catching. Another reason is that French conductor Louis Langr?

"I believe the music world is about to burst into a new age of glory," says Benjamin Zander. If so, it may be because the British-born conductor has been responsible for so much combustive fuel over the past several decades. His intensely committed level of music-making from the podium has earned him cult status. Zander's primary musical outlet during the regular concert season is in Massachusetts, where he's the founding conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, a dynamic orchestra of professionals, students and amateurs.

Beethoven's grip on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra tightened this week, and its grip on Beethoven tightened as well. The BSO performs at 8 tonight and 3 p.m. tomorrow at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. Tickets are $40-$60. Call 410-783-8000 or go to bsomusic.org.

CIRCUS THE MODERN BIG TOP Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey present Bellobration, the 137th edition of The Greatest Show On Earth. This modern, interactive celebration of circus tradition spotlights the comic daredevil Bello. Prepare for acrobats, stunts, Asian elephants, white tigers and a story to tie all of the acts together. Lights, colors and music make full use of today's technology. .................... Bellobration opens at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, with varying times through March 23 at 1st Mariner Arena, 201 W. Baltimore St. Tickets are $7-$70.

Subject: Long-haired male. If you go CSI: Beethoven will be presented at 7:30 tonight (Part I) and 7:30 p.m. tomorrow (Part II) at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. Tickets are $20. Call 410-783-8000 or go to bsomusic.org.

Under music director J. Ernest Green, the Annapolis Chorale's 187 singers joined two soloists and the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra in a transcendent performance of Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem last weekend at the first classical concert of the chorale's 35th season. This was preceded by Green conducting the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra in Beethoven's "Symphony Number 1 in C Major." Green offered an entertaining, informative pre-concert lecture about Beethoven's first symphony and Brahms' requiem, likening the construction of the four parts of a symphony to creating an essay.

The Baltimore Chamber Orchestra opened its 25th anniversary season Tuesday night with the kind of imaginative programming that music director Markand Thakar has made a specialty. In between familiar Beethoven pieces were two rarities by African-born composers and a movie theme by John Williams - a neat balancing act. Thakar's choices for this concert and the rest of the season were inspired by the ensemble's milestone. He looked back at 1984, when conductor Anne Harrigan and her intrepid colleagues launched the BCO, and took note of what was going on in the world.

Ludwig van Beethoven and Daniel Bernard Roumain, the featured composers at tomorrow's Columbia Orchestra concert, have much in common besides their elegant three-name appellations. Both are acclaimed not only as composers but as virtuoso performers, Beethoven primarily as a pianist, Roumain as a violinist. Both prized the music of J.S. Bach, Roumain so much so that he wrote his own set of 24 etudes -- one in each major and minor key -- modeled after Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. And both composers are represented on the program, titled "City and Country," by works that actively engage the world around them.

The notion of fantasy doesn't play very well these days. We live in a culture that values the immediate, the here-and-now: Confessing to a rich fantasy life smacks of escapism. It is tantamount to a denial of reality. We prefer to call our fairy tales "reality shows," casting our imaginative riffs as "real" people in "real" situations. But go back to the 19th century, and the inner life of the imagination holds much greater sway. An example of imagination's cultural prestige is the prevalence of the musical fantasy (also called a fantasia, Fantasie, or fantaisie)

BARCELONA -- This city's celebrated concert hall, Palau de la Musica Catalana, isn't just over the top. It's over the top of the top. A cross between a baroque cathedral and an art nouveaux ornament factory, this grand building, designed by modernist architect Lluis Domenech i Montaner and completed in 1908, doesn't have an undecorated millimeter of space. The stained-glass dome in the ceiling, like a Tiffany lamp on steroids, is framed by ceramic roses that also adorn other nooks and crannies.