Conductor

An article in yesterday's Arts & Society section gave an incorrect year for David Zinman's return to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra after a musicians strike. The conductor returned to the podium in 1989.The Sun regrets the errors.One of David Zinman's greatest moments with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will take place this week, when he leads the last program of his 13-year-tenure as the symphony's music director.My prediction has nothing to do with chutzpah, arrogance or insanity. It's just that I know David Zinman.

Thomas Schreiber, a career railroader who had worked in both freight and passenger service, died Monday of pneumonia at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The longtime Sparks resident was 67. Mr. Schreiber, a third-generation railroader whose father and grandfather worked for the old Pennsylvania Railroad, was born in Altoona, Pa., and later moved with his family to Gray Manor, a southeastern Baltimore County community. When he was 15, his family moved to Sparks, where Mr. Schreiber graduated in 1962 from Hereford High School.

Leslie B. Dunner has been appointed new music director of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, ASO board President Gregory Stiverson announced yesterday.Dunner, who has been resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for 10 years and resident conductor of Canada's Symphony Nova Scotia for two years, is taking the place of former music director Gisele Ben-Dor, now the music director of the Santa Barbara Symphony."We're simply delighted to have him. He is a musician of international reputation," Stiverson says.

Eric Lee Wolf, a colorful and lighthearted MARC conductor who was an institution on Camden Line trains where he entertained passengers with various jokes and windup toys, died May 3 of a massive heart attack at Washington's Union Station. The Arbutus resident was 57. Mr. Wolf's commuter train, No. 849, the 7:20 a.m. from Camden Station, had just arrived at Union Station. "Eric was in the process of opening the doors up when he was stricken," said David Johnson, who is chief customer communications officer for MARC.

One of the most interesting things about last night's Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert was the opportunity to check on the progress of its associate conductor, Chosei Komatsu. This is the young man's fourth season with the orchestra, and his account of himself in works by Mendelssohn, Prokofiev and Chopin (the Piano Concerto No. 1 with soloist Hung-Kuan Chen) suggested real growth since the last time this listener heard him.Komatsu's most impressive work came in a suite arranged from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet."

The 80-piece Columbia Orchestra never followed the lead of a conductor like this. A pint-sized novice, Valerie Kuehne, 10, handled the baton like a veteran adult.The fifth-grader at Atholton Elementary School conducted the orchestra in its performance of Waldteufel's "The Skater's Waltz" at the orchestra's third annual Tiny Tots Concert Sunday afternoon at Wilde Lake Interfaith Center. The Linden Ballet Ensemble performed Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf.""I think it went very well," said Valerie, who said she had told all of her friends to attend.

One wouldn't think that being conductor of the Hopkin Symphony Orchestra -- a university/community orchestra on the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University -- would be a big deal.After all, the orchestra is made up of 70 amateurs, rehearses about once a week and gives four concerts a year. But last spring when the HSO advertised for a new music director, it received more than 90 responses from all over the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel and the People's Republic of China.From those applicants, the orchestra's board asked for videotapes from 25 candidates and then selected five finalists and two alternates -- one of them is Eric Townell, the HSO's acting music director -- for interviews and auditions.

A new era may begin at 8: 30 tonight at the Kennedy Center when Leonard Slatkin conducts his first concert as the National Symphony's new music director.Slatkin has long been considered one of the bright lights among American-born and -trained conductors. He's a great orchestra builder -- the evidence is the superb orchestra he created in St. Louis during his 17-year tenure there -- and he's the right man for the NSO, which has always been less than the sum of its excellent parts.Slatkin's right for Washington in at least one other respect: The orchestra of the nation's capital now has a music director who conducts the music of his native country with genuine flair -- something sure to be reflected by tonight's all-American program of works by Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Howard Hanson, David Baker and Duke Ellington.

Arne Running, music director of the Swarthmore College Orchestra and former conductor of the Jenkintown Music School Chamber Orchestra, has been named music director of the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra.Running, 48, succeeds Karen Deal, the CYSO's founding conductor who recently became the assistant conductor of the Nashville Symphony.About to enter its third season, the CYSO, has quickly become one of the area's major musical organizations. The 60-member orchestra draws young musicians from Anne Arundel County, southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore.

The featured conductor for last night's Baltimore Symphony subscription concert in Meyerhoff Hall was the celebrated Finnish conductor, Paavo Berglund. On a program that included Sibelius' "Pohjola's Daughter" and Franck's Symphony in D Minor, Berglund was scheduled to join pianist Alicia de Larrocha in a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major (K. 467).But the conductor had expected to accompany the Spanish pianist in Concerto No. 27. When he learned otherwise two weeks ago, he informed the orchestra's management that he did not have sufficient time to prepare Concerto No. 21.The day was saved by the orchestra's resident conductor, Daniel Hege, who stepped in to give de Larrocha a superb accompaniment in K. 467. The young conductor may very well have proved a better collaborator for the pianist than Berglund.

Oliver F. "Ollie" Lowman Jr., a retired railroader and World War II veteran, died March 15 of multiple organ failure at Carroll Hospital Center. The Finksburg resident was 84. The son of a Baltimore police officer and a homemaker, Mr. Lowman was born and raised in Baltimore. Mr. Lowman dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Navy in 1943. He served in the Atlantic as a gunner aboard the light cruisers USS Philadelphia and USS Providence and the freighter SS Rhode Island.

Marin Alsop generates the lion's share of attention as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's music director, but she is not the only conductor with a knack for bringing success to the institution. Jack Everly has been doing that since 2003 with the BSO SuperPops, and he's planning to stay on the job at least until 2017. Everly just signed a five-year extension of his contract as principal pops conductor, a significant vote of confidence on both sides. His current contract was to have expired in 2012.

Six years ago, at Catholic University in Washington, there was an unusual presentation of Giuseppe Verdi's monumental Requiem for soloists, chorus and orchestra. The last notes of the score gave way to very different music, coming softly from the choristers. As they filed off the stage and left the hall, they softly intoned a chant from the Kaddish of the Jewish liturgy. When those sounds, too, faded away, there was no applause from the audience. Only some muffled sobs could be heard in the darkened room.

It may not rival Europe's splashy classical music festivals, but the summer presentation of concerts and operas held on the grounds of Castleton Farms, the inviting Virginia estate of conductor Lorin Maazel and his wife, actress Dietlinde Turban-Maazel, is quite an attraction. The Castleton Festival, which opens its second season Friday and offers events each weekend through July 25, is a 2 1/2-hour drive from Baltimore into scenic rolling hills of Rappahannock County. Two venues on the property provide audiences with unusually close-up experiences.

Francis R. Rahl Sr., a retired railroader who enjoyed spending his retirement years on Maryland's Eastern Shore, died Saturday of lung cancer at his son's Union Square home. He was 90. Mr. Rahl, the son of an electro-nickel plater and a homemaker, was born and raised in Greensburg, Pa. After graduating from Greensburg High School in 1937, he worked as an orderly at Greensburg Hospital and later at the Robertshaw Thermostat in Youngwood, Pa. He enlisted in the Army in 1942 and served as an operating room medic in a military hospital at Fort Wayne, Ind., until being discharged in 1946.

Leonard Bernstein, perhaps the most famous musician in the history of the United States, announced yesterday that he was retiring from conducting for health reasons.The announcement, which was made by his public relations firm, quoted his doctor as saying that Mr. Bernstein suffered from "progressive emphysema, complicated by a pleural tumor and a series of pulmonary infections."The conductor has canceled all scheduled engagements. His doctor said that only rest and recuperation will permit Mr. Bernstein -- the composer of several Broadway musicals, including "West Side Story" -- to return to a limited schedule that would include writing, composing and teaching.