Kolker

Conductor Christopher Seaman's program for this past weekend's Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concerts was meant to feature BSO players as soloists. Seaman chose four interesting works, three of which contrasted soloistic groups against the ensemble in the manner of a concerto grosso.Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 opened the program in a performance that featured Seaman conducting from the harpsichord, Conncertmaster Herbert Greenberg as violin soloist and Emily Controulis and Mark Sparks as flute soloists.

Only a very brave conductor or an equally foolish one comes to town to conduct a program of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5. These pieces are so well-known that they are all but impossible to make fresh. Placing two of them on a program, as Yuri Temirkanov did last night when he conducted the Baltimore Symphony in Meyerhoff Hall, is practically a death wish.Of the Russian conductor's unusual gambit, however, one can only say that he came and conquered.In a way, Temirkanov had almost no choice but to present such a program.

'Honey Chil' Milk'at Theatre Project"Honey Chil' Milk," a performance piece created as part of Maryland Art Place's Diverse Works program in 1989, will begin a three-week run at the Theatre Project Wednesday.Conceived and directed by New York choreographer Donald Byrd, "Honey Chil' Milk" uses a variety of theatrical and cinematic styles to examine racial myths and stereotypes in the field of entertainment. The multimedia work will be presented at the Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St., Wednesdays to Saturdays at 8 p.m. with matinees Sundays at 3 p.m. through Feb. 23. Tickets are $10 to $16. For more information call 752-8558.

The 1937 French thriller Pepe Le Moko, which was little seen in the United States because Hollywood swiftly remade it as Algiers, features Jean Gabin in his robust glory as a master thief with a telltale heart. He lords it over the Casbah - the perilous demimonde of Algiers - while yearning, fatally, for a knockout Parisienne (Mireille Balin) and the City of Light itself. The movie is director Julien Duvivier's masterpiece, blending electric documentary images with bravura sequences in a style akin to operatic verismo.

Despite the soft waters of an economic recession, Watermark Place has waded in with the newest and most expensive of suburban Baltimore condominiums.The development rises near the Columbia Mall like a post-modern castle above a canopy of trees. With 12 stories awash in trendy beige and mauve, Watermark is a hard-to-miss oddity among Columbia's tradition of three-bedroom colonials, townhouses and garden apartments.For many, it is a sign that Columbia has come of age, offering a lifestyle and exclusivity once reserved for the well-heeled urban dweller.

Host Marriott Corp. has increased a bid to buy out limited partners in a group that controls four upscale hotels, even as it battles a lawsuit that claims the company failed to make an adequate offer for the partnership units.The Bethesda-based hotel owner said its decision to raise the offer by 20 percent -- to $150,000 per unit -- was not influenced by the litigation.Two Marriott Hotel Properties II Ltd. Partnership (MHP II) unitholders filing on behalf of the group claim the shares are worth at least $225,000 per unit based on the hotels' net operating income, according to documents filed in Delaware Chancery court.

Leon Fleisher will celebrate his 80th birthday this week doing two of his favorite things - playing the piano and conducting. Joining him onstage for an all-Mozart program will be the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which shares with Fleisher a long, strong history. "It's quite fitting that on the very day of my birthday [Wednesday], I have two rehearsals with the orchestra," he says. "It's a kind of homecoming." Such an occasion makes a perfect time for reminiscing and taking stock. Settling into a leather couch opposite two grand pianos in a high-ceilinged salon of his handsome Roland Park home on a recent Sunday morning, Fleisher faces the inevitable question of how he feels about approaching his octogenarian milestone.

A. Harvey Schreter, a retired necktie manufacturer and world traveler, died of cancer Dec. 31 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 91. Born in Havre de Grace, he was the son of a Hungarian immigrant who opened a tie-making business in New York City and later moved it to Harford County and Baltimore. After graduating from Forest Park High School in 1934, Mr. Schreter considered attending the University of Maryland's agricultural school. He was then raising 1,000 chickens behind his family's Glen Avenue home.

Last night's Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program in Meyerhoff Hall showed some of the strengths and weaknesses of its guest conductor, Hugh Wolff.The weaknesses were apparent when he led Haydn's Symphony No. 84. Even though he has just recorded all of the composer's "Paris" Symphonies with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (of which he is music director), Wolff demonstrated what seemed a rudimentary conducting technique. His left and right hands seemed tied together -- the left mirroring exactly what the right was doing -- and there were times when the young conductor's leaps threatened to turn him into an unguided missile.

Saturday's final all-Mozart concert in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Summerfest series presented a program with an extraordinarily high reading on the masterpiece-density scale: the Serenade No. 13 ("Eine Kleine Nachtmusik"), the Piano Concerto No. 12, the Horn Concerto No. 1, the Symphony No. 39 and, in a pre-concert chamber-music performance, the Quintet for Piano and Winds.This kind of program can make listeners glassy-eyed. But this concert, in which Tamas Vasary served not only as a conductor but also as piano soloist, left one deeply satisfied.