Berlioz

Columbia's 2004-2005 concert season begins next weekend, not with a trickle but with a deluge. The Columbia Orchestra, Howard County's premier ensemble for instrumental music, takes the Rouse Theatre stage at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 23. Works by Beethoven, Berlioz and 20th- century master Paul Hindemith will be on the program that will be led by Jason Love, the ensemble's conductor. Anchoring the concert will be classical music's ultimate drug trip gone bad, Berlioz's phantasmagoric Symphonie Fantastique.

Appointed artistic director and conductor of the Handel Choir of Baltimore in 2004, Melinda O'Neal has been praised for her "lucid and musical understanding of the score," "moving and satisfying interpretations" and her "stylish and clear manner on the podium." A Berlioz specialist and an aficionado of Mozart, O'Neal also is professor of music at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., where she teaches courses in conducting and music theory. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee I appreciated the message of values of doing the right thing.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, recently immersed in Russian, Czech and Norwegian music, is turning its attention to French fare this weekend and made a filling meal out of it. The chef is George Pehlivanian, a talented American with a French connection - he won a conducting competition in France a decade ago. And when he last visited the BSO in 1999, it was with a French twist, too - music by Saint-Saens, who's on this bill, along with Berlioz....

Columbia's 2004-2005 concert season begins next weekend, not with a trickle but with a deluge. The Columbia Orchestra, Howard County's premier ensemble for instrumental music, takes the Rouse Theatre stage at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 23. Works by Beethoven, Berlioz and 20th- century master Paul Hindemith will be on the program that will be led by Jason Love, the ensemble's conductor. Anchoring the concert will be classical music's ultimate drug trip gone bad, Berlioz's phantasmagoric Symphonie Fantastique.

Anyone who thinks drug-induced musical dreams are exclusive to 1960s rock-'n'-rollers doesn't know classical music very well.For sitting at the core of the symphonic repertoire is Hector Berlioz's immensely colorful "Symphonie Fantastique," the five-movement tale of a fixated lover and his opium-inspired dream gone bad.With its hair-raising "March to the Scaffold" and a phantasmagoric "Witches Sabbath" punctuated by the sounds of demons, sorcerers and...

Appointed artistic director and conductor of the Handel Choir of Baltimore in 2004, Melinda O'Neal has been praised for her "lucid and musical understanding of the score," "moving and satisfying interpretations" and her "stylish and clear manner on the podium." A Berlioz specialist and an aficionado of Mozart, O'Neal also is professor of music at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., where she teaches courses in conducting and music theory. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee I appreciated the message of values of doing the right thing.

The program that the Baltimore Symphony and music director David Zinman performed last night in Meyerhoff Hall is one of two with which they will tour Japan later this month.Michael Torke's "Bright Blue Music," Debussy's "La Mer" and Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique" are works that play to the strengths and experiences of this orchestra and conductor. Those strengths are an almost unshakable sense of rhythm, a finely tuned ensemble and a wind section that is more than equal to the demands of the Debussy and Berlioz works.

THE FRENCH COMPOSER Berlioz was a Romantic, but not your shrinking violet kind. He sent his youthful, early "Eight Scenes of Faust" to Goethe, the creator of the great German poem and his inspiration. The attempt to curry favor with the aging master poet failed. A friend advised Goethe the Berlioz score was "a fragment of an abortion resulting from a hideous incest." The correspondence was doomed. Berlioz shelved the project.But not for good. Seventeen years later in 1846 a more experienced Berlioz used fragments and new material for "The Damnation of Faust," called it a "dramatic legend" but not an opera, and after a bad start sailed off with a masterpiece of Romantic flourish.

"The French are the wittiest, the most charming and (up to the present at all events), the least musical people on earth," wrote Stendhalin "The Life of Rossini" in 1824.Boy, let's hope he was exaggerating, or that the trend subsided. If the good baron had it right, it's going to be a long weekend at Maryland Hall, where the Annapolis Symphony is about to present its fourth concert of the season, a program devoted to works by Saint Saens, Faure, Franck and Berlioz, Frenchmen all."They make a nice little group," says ASO conductor Gisele Ben-Dor, who will lead the performances tonight and tomorrow night, with a laugh.

TC Here are two hard tasks for a guest conductor.Perform music much associated with an orchestra's current and previous music directors and produce something his own.Turn that piece, even if as familiar to the ear as a Hershey's to the palate, into something strange and wild.Mariss Jansons accomplished those tasks in Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique" with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in Meyerhoff Hall last night. The performance made one remember why it's called the "Fantastic Symphony."

NEW YORK - Hector Berlioz was the Orson Welles of classical music - a certifiable genius, intriguingly eccentric, passionate, obstinate, way ahead of his time. Just as few people initially recognized the breadth of Welles' talent when it was first manifested in Citizen Kane, few understood the intense originality of Berlioz's first masterpiece, Symphonie fantastique. The analogy can be drawn out a little more. Consider the way Welles stretched himself even further with The Magnificent Ambersons but had a huge amount of his vision thrown onto the cutting room floor by insensitive producers.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, recently immersed in Russian, Czech and Norwegian music, is turning its attention to French fare this weekend and made a filling meal out of it. The chef is George Pehlivanian, a talented American with a French connection - he won a conducting competition in France a decade ago. And when he last visited the BSO in 1999, it was with a French twist, too - music by Saint-Saens, who's on this bill, along with Berlioz....

Anyone who thinks drug-induced musical dreams are exclusive to 1960s rock-'n'-rollers doesn't know classical music very well.For sitting at the core of the symphonic repertoire is Hector Berlioz's immensely colorful "Symphonie Fantastique," the five-movement tale of a fixated lover and his opium-inspired dream gone bad.With its hair-raising "March to the Scaffold" and a phantasmagoric "Witches Sabbath" punctuated by the sounds of demons, sorcerers and...

Many of Edward Polochick's fine qualities as a conductor were on display Saturday evening in LeClerq Hall. This season-opening program of his Concert Artists of Baltimore fell into two parts, "Orchestral Works of Mendelssohn and Gade" and "The Romantic Choral Sound."It was the latter that drew the most inspired work from Polochick and his choristers. A performance of the Irish composer Charles Stanford's lovely "The Blue Bird" was exquisite -- immaculate in its details, beautiful in its balances and shimmering with atmosphere.

Editor's note: Berlioz the bear and his fellow musicians are due to play at the town ball when their bandwagon gets stuck. A strange buzzing in his bass saves the day.Zum. Zum buzzz. Zum. Buzz. Berlioz had been practicing for weeks, and now just when the orchestra was going to play in the village square for a gala ball, a strange buzz was coming from his double bass."Why now?" Berlioz said to himself.The musicians arrived with their instruments. As Berlioz watched them climb aboard the bandwagon, all he could think about was his buzzing bass.

An unexpected touch of drama put organizers of the All-County Band festival, set for tomorrow at Westminster High School, on edge.Dutch composer-conductor Johan di Meij, who was to have led the senior band in a program of his works, including one commissioned for the event, sent word early this week that he wouldn't be able to attend because his father was gravely ill.However, an American specialist in the music of the 44-year-old di Meij (pronounced di...

Many of Edward Polochick's fine qualities as a conductor were on display Saturday evening in LeClerq Hall. This season-opening program of his Concert Artists of Baltimore fell into two parts, "Orchestral Works of Mendelssohn and Gade" and "The Romantic Choral Sound."It was the latter that drew the most inspired work from Polochick and his choristers. A performance of the Irish composer Charles Stanford's lovely "The Blue Bird" was exquisite -- immaculate in its details, beautiful in its balances and shimmering with atmosphere.

An unexpected touch of drama put organizers of the All-County Band festival, set for tomorrow at Westminster High School, on edge.Dutch composer-conductor Johan di Meij, who was to have led the senior band in a program of his works, including one commissioned for the event, sent word early this week that he wouldn't be able to attend because his father was gravely ill.However, an American specialist in the music of the 44-year-old di Meij (pronounced di...

The program that the Baltimore Symphony and music director David Zinman performed last night in Meyerhoff Hall is one of two with which they will tour Japan later this month.Michael Torke's "Bright Blue Music," Debussy's "La Mer" and Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique" are works that play to the strengths and experiences of this orchestra and conductor. Those strengths are an almost unshakable sense of rhythm, a finely tuned ensemble and a wind section that is more than equal to the demands of the Debussy and Berlioz works.

During its six-year existence, the Naval Academy's Bryant Distinguished Artist Series has become one of the jewels in the crown of the local concert season.The 1997-1998 version promises to be no exception.On Oct. 20, the Stuttgart Philharmonic of Germany will perform two of the greatest Beethoven works: the hyperactive Seventh Symphony and the E-flat Piano Concerto, the "Emperor," on the stage of Alumni Hall.The soloist in the concerto will be American pianist Misha Dichter.A student of the legendary Rosina Lhevinne at New York City's Juilliard School, Dichter launched his career by winning a medal at the 1966 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow.