Leonard Bernstein

In the last few years, more and more American orchestras have been issuing commemorative sets, usually culled from broadcast archives, of their own performances. The pioneer in such efforts was the Chicago Symphony, but its example has been followed by other major orchestras, including those in Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and, most recently, New York.The economic motivation is easy to understand. Given current fees, the time that it takes an orchestra nowadays to record enough material to fill a 70-minute CD is likely to cost considerably more than $200,000.

True to its name and its origins, the Thanksgiving holiday inspires in us feelings of gratitude for life and an appreciation of our extraordinary heritage as Americans. And in my house, right up there with turkey and stuffing, (ahead, even, of football), there is beautiful music on hand to bring these themes home for the holiday.For the plushest, good old American hymn-sing around, I turn to "Amazing Grace," an assortment of 20 vintage hymns and spirituals arranged and conducted by the late Robert Shaw (Telarc 80325)

ROGER L. STEVENS, who died Monday at 87, was a remarkable man who excelled pretty much at whatever he tried. The lasting contributions of this real estate tycoon, though, were to culture.He spearheaded the construction of Washington's Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a complex that gave the nation's capital the polish it had lacked. Mr. Stevens also played a crucial role in the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts. And his 200 theatrical productions on Broadway and in London introduced audiences to writers ranging from Tennessee Williams to Tom Stoppard.

I don't expect transcendence in a TV documentary.Get the facts right, create an engaging narrative in which to present them, be honest with the audience, and connect a few dots that I might not have connected myself. Do that, and I'm happy.So, I am delirious, enraptured and just plain cuckoo about "Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note," a two-hour film portrait of one of the great figures of postwar American life, airing on PBS tonight. "Reaching for the Note" has at least three moments of transcendence and each is from a different realm of Bernstein's fabulous musical career and troubled life.

Beethoven, Piano Sonatas, Opus 2 (Nos. 1 in F minor, 2 in A major and 3 in C major), performed by Alfred Brendel (Philips Classics 442124) and Murray Perahia (Sony Classical 64397)Alfred Brendel's disc is part of his current cycle-in-progress of the sonatas -- when completed, it will be his third. That Perahia's disc contains all three of the first sonatas for piano Beethoven published suggests that it may have been intended as the first volume in a complete cycle. If that is true -- and if the cycle is completed -- that would be very good news: Perahia's performances of the composer's first triptych of sonatas are tremendous.

"Dance Mix," performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman conducting (Argo 444 454-2): This collection of 11 short dance pieces by 11 composers, including Aaron Jay Kernis, John Adams, Christopher Rouse and Leonard Bernstein, is probably the finest recording made by the Baltimore Symphony with its current music director, David Zinman. This is immensely difficult music, and conductor and orchestra perform all of it with enthusiasm, virtuosity and rhythmic pizazz.To hear how far the Baltimore Symphony has come in the 10 years of the Zinman era, just compare the Baltimore version of Adams' "The Chairman Dances" with that recorded by the San Francisco Symphony and Edo de Waart in the late 1980s.

Richard Stoltzman is the rare artist whose performances are as varied as his talents.In four musically different concerts sponsored by the Candlelight Concert Society, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and Friends will perform a crossover concert of jazz classics tonight, a classical chamber ensemble highlighting the clarinet tomorrow and two children's programs Sunday at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre."

Walter Proost, the 42-year-old Belgian maestro who will guest-conduct the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra this weekend, may be unfamiliar to most Americans, but he has certainly been turning heads in Europe lately.Being the first non-Italian ever engaged as the permanent conductor of an Italian orchestra may not sound like much on this side of the Atlantic, but in Italy, where parochial political hacks have had a stranglehold on the arts for generations, his appointment was a real eyebrow-raiser.

What a swell party it would have been. Leonard Bernstein's 75th birthday, that is. There will be celebrations throughout the music world, of course, including an all-star gala at New York's Lincoln Center on the actual day, Aug. 25, but it won't be the same. Without the incomparable conductor around to share in the fun, there will be something bittersweet lingering in the air.It has been lingering since Bernstein's death in 1990. Obviously, musical life has gone on and will continue to thrive wherever culture is extant.

The Greitzer Ensemble, one of the country's most successful musical families, has begun performing again after a three-year hiatus. The group will play chamber and salon favorites during the season's second Sundays of Note performance at Western Maryland College.The performance will take place at 2 p.m. Sunday in Baker Memorial Chapel.Ensemble members, all part of the Greitzer family except for occasional guest artists, have held principal positions in a number of major orchestras and music organizations, including the American Ballet Theater, the Aspen Festival and the Jerusalem Symphony.

NEW YORK - "This is exactly what my father wanted," Jamie Bernstein said yesterday afternoon, wiping away tears after a gripping performance of Leonard Bernstein's Mass led by Marin Alsop in the vast, gilded United Palace Theater at 175th St. and Broadway. "This was incredible," the composer's daughter said. That performance, attended by more than 3,000 people, found the stage crammed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Morgan State University Choir and the large cast that, on Friday night, had brought down a sold-out house at Carnegie Hall that included actor Alec Baldwin and writer Anna Quindlen.

Make us grow in love - from Eucharistic Prayer II, Roman Catholic Mass When Leonard Bernstein undertook to create a work for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, it was inevitable that he would think big. Very big. The result was Mass, subtitled A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers. There has never been, and probably never will be, anything quite like it. Since its premiere Sept. 8, 1971, it has generated mixed reactions, from ecstatic to dismissive.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will help pay tribute to Leonard Bernstein at New York's Carnegie Hall next season, performing his eclectic Mass with the Morgan State University Choir and Brooklyn (N.Y.) Youth Chorus. BSO music director and Bernstein protege Marin Alsop will conduct the Carnegie performance Oct. 24, as well as another concert the next day at the United Palace Theater, a restored vaudeville/movie venue in the uptown New York neighborhood of Washington Heights. The second performance will involve hundreds of New York City public-school students.

COMICS RELIEF WHAT / / Free Comic Book Day WHEN / / Saturday WHERE / / A variety of venues that sell comic books, including Comics Kingdom, 3998 Roland Ave.; Shananigans Toy Shop, 5004-B Lawndale Ave.; and Cutting Edge Comics, 2832 Christopher Ave. WHY / / Because comic books will be given away to promote readership. CONTACT / / Visit www.freecomicbook day.com to find the location nearest you. FREE HARLEM RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL The Prince George's County Harlem Renaissance Festival is Saturday.

Opera, as most of us picture it, is tied up with spectacle: crowd scenes, triumphal marches, rivers overflowing their banks to destroy entire civilizations and that sort of thing. But opera also can be an intimate art form, which is the point of Three by Three, a program of three, one-act American operas produced by Opera AACC that will play tonight through Sunday at the Pascal Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold. Gian-Carlo Menotti's The Telephone, Samuel Barber's A Hand of Bridge and Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti have been staged by John Bowen, founder of Baltimore's enterprising Opera Vivente, and will be conducted by Douglas Byerly, AACC's music program coordinator.

Uncommonly blessed with multiple talents, Leonard Bernstein faced multiple conflicts in his life - sexuality, politics, faith. Above all, faith. He struggled mightily with his own Hebrew upbringing in his Kaddish Symphony and went interdenominational with his alternately dazzling and dismaying, ultimately affecting Mass. Subtitled "a theatre piece for singers, players and dancers," it was composed for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. It pleased some (I'll never forget the sheer emotional - and communal - rush of the first preview performance that September night)

NEW YORK - Adolph Green, the playwright, performer and lyricist who in a six-decade collaboration with Betty Comden was co-author of such hit Broadway musicals as On the Town, Wonderful Town and Bells Are Ringing and the screenplays for Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87. Ms. Comden and Mr. Green wrote the words for much of the Broadway show music written by Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne, Cy Coleman, Andre Previn, Morton Gould, Saul Chaplin, John Frank and Roger Edens.

Richard D. Mudd, 101, who spent much of his life trying to overturn his grandfather's conviction on charges of aiding Abraham Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, died Tuesday at his home in Saginaw, Mich. Mr. Mudd, who retired in 1965 after 37 years as a physician for General Motors Corp., traveled the nation on speaking engagements, many of them before Civil War historical organizations. He spent decades trying to clear the name of his grandfather, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who treated Mr. Booth after the 1865 assassination of President Lincoln at Washington's Ford's Theater.

MADISON, Wis. - Growing up, Chris Christoffersen didn't envision being part of the traveling circus known as the NCAA tournament. There were only 15 houses in Christoffersen's village in Denmark, and he played soccer, not basketball. "Goalie," recalled Christofferson, who quickly outgrew the sport, started playing basketball six years ago and now, at 7 feet 2 and 300 pounds, starts at center for Oregon. "People didn't even know what basketball was." The same could be said for the towns and cities where Luke Ridnour, Luke Jackson, Freddie Jones and the rest of the Ducks grew up in on the West Coast.

Bobby McFerrin tells the story of how he learned an invaluable lesson from Leonard Bernstein while picking up pointers on conducting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. Asked about a note-packed passage in the score that was giving McFerrin some trouble, Bernstein replied, "It's all jazz." That incident provided a starting point for McFerrin's latest engagement with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. This "Symphony With a Twist" program, appropriately titled "It's All Jazz," looked more fulfilling on paper than it turned out to be Friday evening at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland in College Park.