Mahler

Last week's winter storm severely disrupted the rehearsal schedule of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, whose 70-odd members had to maneuver slick roads and work through power outages. Maestro Jos?-Luis Novo and his plucky orchestra took the stage at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts as scheduled Friday to present works by Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Felix Mendelssohn and Leonard Bernstein in a Valentine's Day-inspired program subtitled "All About Love." But while love may be blind, it is not deaf.

If there's a problem child among Gustav Mahler's nine symphonies, it's No. 7. A little unwieldy and unruly, prone to go off in unexpected directions, the Seventh has never been quite as easy to love as the others. But the work responds well to discipline, respect and affection, qualities it received Tuesday night by conductor Hajime Teri Murai and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. Mahler, a little obsessive about death, slipped something funereal into all of his symphonies, usually to profound effect.

The Mahler Symphony No.1 is one of the most ambitious and impressive first symphonies in music history. It employs a massive orchestra and the variety of thematic material is awesome. Unfortunately Daniel Hege and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra did not meet its challenges. There were many fine touches in all four movements but the magic of the music was always just beyond the BSO's grasp.The first movement did have a promising start. The opening high string chords were wonderfully atmospheric.

"Yes, indeed, and what's really remarkable is that every jackass notices it at once," Brahms replied to one of the many critics who had pointed out to him the similarity between the "Ode to Joy" theme in the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the lyrical theme in the finale of Brahms' own First Symphony.Brahms was never one to suffer fools gladly, and his irritation is particularly understandable in light of his 20-year-long struggle to write a symphony in the shadow of Beethoven.

The story of Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra ranks among the more remarkable in symphonic annals. In 1980 a shaggy-haired, precociously gifted 25-year-old protege of Pierre Boulez is named principal conductor of the Birmingham orchestra, a solid-enough provincial ensemble, but ranked far beneath London's internationally glamorous five orchestras.Eighteen years later that same orchestra, now much recorded and considered among the best in the world, makes its third tour of the United States (and its fourth of Japan)

Anniversaries exist as much to regenerate what's valuable about the past as to remember it. That's why the Peabody Symphony Orchestra is celebrating 100 years of performances with Mahler's mighty Symphony No. 2 (the "Resurrection"). This gigantic, 80-minute work is the piece in which Mahler tried to outdo Beethoven's Ninth and nearly succeeded. It traces a trajectory of life and death through a graphic musical depiction of the Last Judgment and Resurrection. After all, what could be better than the past 100 years of the Peabody Symphony than the next 100?

The 3 1/2 -hour traversal of the Bach "Saint Matthew" Passion at Le Clerc Hall on Sunday evening has to go down as the best thing the Concert Artists of Baltimore has given us to date. Everything about this performance was beautifully conceived and executed.Bach's "Saint Matthew" Passion ranks along with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as music that demands the highest commitment. It is a massive survey of religious feelings, from the tearful devotion of the faithful to the mockery of the nonbelievers.

In a music review in yesterday's editions of The Sun, an incorrect name was given for the person responsible for the acoustic redesign of the Kennedy Center's Concert Hall. The redesign was done by Christopher Jaffee.The Sun regrets the error.Daniele Gatti's concert with the Royal Philharmonic at the Kennedy Center Sunday afternoon was the first chance I have had to hear the acoustics of the center's renovated Concert Hall. About the hall (which was renovated at a cost of $14 million and was closed for nine months)

Gustav Mahler's prophetic "my time will come" was given a resounding ring of truth yesterday afternoon at the Meyerhoff with a white-hot performance of his massive "Resurrection" Symphony. The 80-minute behemoth was almost perfectly realized by conductor Hajime Teri Murai and the 260 performers assembled to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Peabody Orchestra.The "Resurrection" Symphony gave Mahler his first public triumph as a composer. This symphony took six years to create, from the composition of the opening movement, a tone poem titled "Totenfeier," to its five-movement final version with its massive choral finale.

Daniel Hege should be nervous.He's only just begun his first season as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's assistant conductor, he's only 31 and he's about to lead his first week of classical subscription concerts. Moreover, he will be conducting for one of the most celebrated soloists alive -- violinist-violist Pinchas Zukerman -- in a series of concerts that begins tonight in Meyerhoff Hall and concludes Sunday afternoon in a high-profile appearance at the Kennedy Center."I don't get that nervous -- unless something isn't prepared well," the conductor says calmly.

Toward the end of his much-too-short life, Gustav Mahler completed two works filled with the sounds of leave-taking. Both Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) and the Symphony No. 9 suggest a composer coming to terms with his mortality, looking back on what had been and also peering into the mist for a sense of what would come after. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform Mahler's Ninth Symphony, conducted by music director Marin Alsop, on a program that, fittingly, will be prefaced by Leonard Bernstein's Opening Prayer, a setting of the ancient text "May the Lord bless you and keep you."

Some weekends, you just go from musical high to musical high. Friday night, the rush came from hearing a performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony in Washington that really did reach an uplifting peak. Saturday night, it was a riveting encounter with Elliott Carter's thorny, ingenious String Quartet No. 5 in Columbia. On Sunday came the curious and strangely appealing combination of 20th-century minimalism played on 18th-century instruments in Baltimore. Mahler's Symphony No. 2, known by that Resurrection tag, is a roughly 80-minute journey of body and soul that ranges in sonic impact from the enormous to the exceedingly subtle.

As a longtime, thankfully incurable sufferer of Mahlerian fever, I found last weekend's lineup at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall an irresistible draw - Mahler's Symphony No. 6 on Saturday night performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, and No. 5 on Sunday afternoon performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. NSO music director Leonard Slatkin has never impressed me more than on this occasion. He conveyed the weight of the Sixth - it's not commonly known as the "Tragic" Symphony for nothing - without wallowing in the dark side, always allowing lyrical contrasts plenty of ecstatic release.

DVD DAMAGES: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON -- Sony Pictures. Available Tuesday. DVD: $49.95. Blu-Ray: $79.95. When FX launched Damages last summer as part of the cable network's push for more prestige dramas, the critics adored the tense law mystery but viewers were lukewarm. Now that FX has granted the show two more seasons, the uninitiated have even more reason catch up with the show's suspenseful first season. In her first starring role in a TV series, Glenn Close commands the screen with her portrayal of the icy litigator Patty Hewes.

While much attention is focused on Marin Alsop these days, as she gets ready to launch her tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in September, her two immediate predecessors, Yuri Temirkanov and David Zinman, are also on the radar screen. Recent recordings from the same label, Sony / BMG's RCA Red Seal, find both men achieving impressive results in music by composers they were often associated with during their years at the BSO -- Mahler for Zinman, conducting the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich; Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich for Temirkanov, leading the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.

If there's anyone left who doesn't yet realize that things are changing - big time - at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, exposure to this week's concerts would drive that point home. Marin Alsop, the BSO's intrepid music director designate, is on the podium for a program that practically shouts business-as-anything-but-usual. To balance a hefty war horse, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Alsop chose two works new to the ensemble's repertoire, a kind of orchestral nocturne by Gustav Mahler and a kind of mind-bending musical trip by John Adams.

Mendelssohn, Schumann, Mahler -- these composers are so famous they usually go by last names alone. Now consider this roster: Fanny Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Alma Mahler. How many people instantly recognize them as composers, too? To narrow the topic even more, how many people have heard their music often enough to think of it as familiar? Welcome to the history of female composers. It's a history well worth exploring, especially as we're in the midst of National Women's History Month -- complete with some complementary concert scheduling.

The sun descends behind the mountains. ... The moon floats like a silver boat through the blue lake of heaven. ... My heart is still and awaits its hour. ... " Such imagery of leave-taking, drawn from ancient Chinese poetry, inspired one of the greatest works of Western music, Gustav Mahler's The Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), for vocal soloists and orchestra. Those particular lines are from The Farewell (Der Abschied), the final movement, which, at more than 30 minutes, takes up half of this piece from 1909.

Last week's winter storm severely disrupted the rehearsal schedule of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, whose 70-odd members had to maneuver slick roads and work through power outages. Maestro Jos?-Luis Novo and his plucky orchestra took the stage at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts as scheduled Friday to present works by Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Maurice Ravel, Felix Mendelssohn and Leonard Bernstein in a Valentine's Day-inspired program subtitled "All About Love." But while love may be blind, it is not deaf.

If there's a problem child among Gustav Mahler's nine symphonies, it's No. 7. A little unwieldy and unruly, prone to go off in unexpected directions, the Seventh has never been quite as easy to love as the others. But the work responds well to discipline, respect and affection, qualities it received Tuesday night by conductor Hajime Teri Murai and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. Mahler, a little obsessive about death, slipped something funereal into all of his symphonies, usually to profound effect.