Joshua Bell

THE BALTIMORE Symphony Orchestra today announced a 1991-92 program of 24 weeks of concerts and recordings, featuring pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Misha Dichter, flutist James Galway, 16-year-old violinist Julian Rachlin and guest conductors Mariss Jansons, Peter Maag and Gunther Herbig.Other prominent artists in the season from Sept. 7, 1991, to June 5, 1992, are pianists Rudolf Firkusny, Yefim Bronfman and Andre Watts, and violinists Elmar Oliveira, Pamela Frank and Joshua Bell. Singers include sopranos Harolyn Blackwell and Faith Esham and tenor John Aler.

For a complete list of Grammy winners, go to www.sunspot.net/awards. Song of the year: "Fallin'," Alicia Keys (Alicia Keys). Female pop vocal performance: "I'm Like a Bird," Nelly Furtado. Male pop vocal performance: "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight," James Taylor. Pop performance by a duo or group with vocal: "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," U2. Pop collaboration with vocals: "Lady Marmalade," Christina Aguilera. Female rock vocal performance: "Get Right With God," Lucinda Williams.

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.

British composer Nicholas Maw will join the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in September.He succeeds Chen Yi, the Chinese-born composer who taught at Peabody for the last two years. She has become a tenured professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.Maw, 62, studied with Lennox Berkeley at the Royal Academy of Music and with Nadia Boulanger and Max Deutsch, a student of Arnold Schoenberg, in Paris.He is best known for the 96-minute orchestral epic "Odyssey" (1987), which has been called a masterpiece by British and American critics alike.

These days, conducting careers are conceived amid the glitter and glamour of international competitions and high-priced recording contracts. But there was a time when nearly all the great ones got their start toiling in the opera houses of Europe.Arturo Toscanini, Herbert von Karajan, Sir Georg Solti and Bruno Walter are but a few names on that list.The career of Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the 29-year-old Peruvian maestro who will conduct the Annapolis Symphony this weekend as the final entrant in this season's conductor search, renews that once-important connection between the concert hall and the opera house.

Some famous musicians were playing slightly different tunes in B-more last weekend. Let's start with Darius Rucker. You may know him better as the lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish. Darius and his new band put on a benefit concert at the Lyric Opera House, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Carson Scholars Fund. The music was certainly a flash from the past, but not from Darius' own history. Instead of performing the hits that made him famous, he and his band took on Sinatra. And, from what we hear, they did "Ol' Blue Eyes" proud.

Appearances by conductors Mariss Jansons, Peter Maag and Hans Vonk -- all making their local debuts -- will highlight the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's 1991-92 season, details of which were announced yesterday by music director David Zinman.Among the biggest roadblocks the BSO has faced in the past has been inducing prominent conductors to lead the orchestra. While the services of these three conductors do not indicate a major breakthrough, they add to a growing number of first-rate conducting talents now willing to come to Baltimore.

The Philadelphia Orchestra returned to Baltimore Tuesday night to receive a thunderous standing ovation and three uproarious curtain calls for conductor Christoph Eschenbach after the triumphant conclusion of the finale of the Mahler Fifth Symphony.The last appearance here by this fabulous orchestra was on March 14, 1978, and one hopes that it won't take another 16 years to hear this world-class ensemble in the Meyerhoff again.This orchestra is one of the best in the list of great virtuoso ensembles.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra gave an engrossing discourse on music as an organic substance last night. Each work on the program, in one way or another, involved the dynamic growth of melodic material from small seeds. Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor is among the most brilliant examples of this process. The work keeps unfolding and developing, spinning out in new directions, only to wind back around itself as it gains in breadth and height. The score is not just organic, but organ-like - Franck, a master organist, thought of an orchestra as a massive pipe organ.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will play slightly fewer works by perennial favorites Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky and more unfamiliar pieces in the new 1991-92 season announced yesterday. But Samuel Barber, Johannes Brahms and Sergei Rachmaninoff get a good hearing.The BSO plays three selections each of Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky in the 1991-92 Celebrity and Favorites series, compared with four Beethovens, four Tchaikovskys and nine Mozarts during this season noting the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death.