Concerto

Ten years ago, a 16-year-old from the Howard County neighborhood of Dunloggin walked onto the stage of Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to perform part of Mozart's Oboe Concerto. Her back-up band was the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. This week, she'll be in the same spot on that stage to play the same concerto (all of it this time) with the same ensemble, but not as a guest soloist. Katherine Needleman will merely be stepping forward from her usual position at the center of the BSO's woodwind section.

The latest Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program lists only one composer, Johannes Brahms, but there really are two - as-is Brahms, and after-extreme-makeover Brahms. The real McCoy is represented by the grandly scaled Piano Concerto No. 2, the gussied up one by the Piano Quartet No. 1, as extravagantly orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg. Thomas Dausgaard, principal conductor of the Danish National Symphony, brought to the program exceptional communication skills in his BSO debut Thursday night at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

One might think that on a concert program dominated by Hector Berlioz's splashy, phantasmagoric Symphonie Fantastique and Beethoven's weighty "Coriolan" Overture, a little-known 20th-century work could get lost in the shuffle. But when the conductor is Jason Love and the ensemble doing the playing is his Columbia Orchestra, that assumption goes out the window. Love's musical sensibilities are steeped in the contemporary idiom, and the most memorable moments of his tenure here have been achieved in works by Igor Stravinsky, Silvestre Revueltas, John Adams and other 20th-century composers.

I have some really nice friends," Leonard Slatkin said. Pretty talented, too. Fifteen of them - from Emanuel Ax to Pinchas Zukerman - joined the National Symphony Orchestra to celebrate Slatkin's 60th birthday in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall Sunday night. A lively party, at the very least. Entering his ninth season as NSO music director, Slatkin is worth celebrating for several reasons beyond the age milestone (actually reached on Sept. 1). He has steadily upgraded the orchestra and boldly expanded its repertoire, while building a strong bond with the public.

With more than 800 season subscribers and an international array of musicians and dancers on its performance roster each year, the Naval Academy's Distinguished Artists Series has become a cultural force to be reckoned with throughout the region. That will remain true in the 2004-2005 season, which begins Sept. 14 at the academy's Alumni Hall with Yuri Temirkanov conducting his Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in performances of Schumann's Piano Concerto and Brahms' monumental 1st Symphony.

Perfection in music-making may be elusive, but perfection in music asserts itself all the time. Did Bach ever write anything that wasn't demonstrably perfect in logic, execution, form? Or Mozart. Absolutely perfect in clarity of thought, structural symmetry, expressive beauty. No wonder we keep coming back to such composers, the same way we return to, say, a statue of Michelangelo. We want and need reassurance that at least a few objects are flawless in an imperfect world. Such reassurance abounded in the latest Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program, led by music director Yuri Temirkanov.

As "one Hall of Famer to another," Brooks Robinson presented a collection of Orioles gear - bat, cap and T-shirt - to an obviously delighted Leon Fleisher Thursday night at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. It was the prelude to a celebration by the Concert Artists of Baltimore of the brilliant pianist's milestone season - he's 75. Fleisher, who a few years ago became the first living pianist to be inducted into the Classical Music Hall of Fame in Cincinnati, returned the favor by hitting one out of the hall.

"I hear America singing," wrote Walt Whitman, and if you'd like to share in the great poet's auditory joy this weekend, Columbia is surely the place to do it. On Saturday evening at Jim Rouse Theatre, Columbia Pro Cantare, one of Maryland's finest choirs, will present a mini-festival of American choral music under its founding director, Frances Motyca Dawson. At center stage will be none other than Peter Schickele, the composer and musical commentator who has won great fame as the satirical musicologist who "discovered" the hilarious works of PDQ Bach, the mythical 22nd child of Johann Sebastian Bach who created such, er, classics as "Oedipus Tex," "Concerto for Horn & Hardart," and the heart-rending madrigals, "The Queen To Me a Royal Pain Doth Give," and "My Bonnie Lass She Smelleth."

Any program devoted to works by Vivaldi for solo instrument(s) and orchestra invariably calls to mind a stale joke: He didn't write 500 concertos; he wrote one concerto 500 times. But such a program performed with the kind of technical bravado and unwavering musicality displayed last night by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra demolishes that punch line. The big draw for this conductor-less concert is The Four Seasons, a work with an indestructible position high up on the classical hit parade.

The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra welcomed a pair of visitors to Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts on Saturday evening for a collaborative effort that showed the local orchestra to its best advantage. Visiting on the podium was Emil de Cou, a young American maestro who is associate conductor of Washington's National Symphony Orchestra. Joining him for Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto was Jon Nakamatsu, the gold medalist at the 10th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1997 who gave Annapolis audiences a bustling "Emperor" Concerto of Beethoven last season with Leslie Dunner on the podium.