Mahler

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Yuri Temirkanov, one of the world's most respected conductors, ends his six-year tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra with the same work he started with - Mahler's stirring Resurrection Symphony. It's easily the must-hear event of the classical season. At 8 tonight and tomorrow and 3 p.m. Sunday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. $25 to $75. 410-783-8000 or baltimoresymphony.org

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.

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.

Anti-war one-acts A double bill of timely anti-war one-acts opens at Performance Workshop Theatre Company tomorrow. The production consists of Aria da Capo, Edna St. Vincent Millay's commedia dell'arte fantasy, written in the aftermath of World War I, and One for the Road, Harold Pinter's indictment of the torture of political prisoners, written in 1984. Marc Horwitz directs Aria da Capo, and Marlyn G. Robinson directs One for the Road. The cast members, most of whom appear in both plays, are Teresa M. Altoz, Paul Baron, Thomas Bowers, Ira L. Gamerman, Horwitz and Jesse Tallyen.

Perhaps the second most wonderful thing about being young is being slow to recognize danger or difficultly. That's surely one reason why the battle of the skies in World War II was won putting American teen-agers in fighter planes. It must also have been a factor in the convincing performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 6 that the Peabody Symphony Orchestra gave Saturday evening in Friedberg Concert Hall.Under the baton of their music director, Hajime Teri Murai, the young musicians performed this fiercely difficult work, the most tragic in the Mahler canon, with energy, stamina and accuracy that would have made a professional orchestra proud.

Some composers are embedded in the earth. Their music bubbles up from a deep, 100 percent natural spring, and, no matter how high it might soar, can never sever the tether to terra firma. Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius are perfect examples, and they are perfectly paired on this week's Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program. Mahler's Symphony No. 1 and Sibelius' Violin Concerto both open with a murmur, like grass stirring from a breeze at dawn. Both works proceed to build an organic momentum and power, like the natural world itself, creating vistas of alternately rugged and pristine beauty.

Three years ago, when discussions about the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's 75th season began, David Zinman waited to see how serious the orchestra's management was about that anniversary. When he realized that management planned to celebrate it seriously indeed, he knew that there was only one work with which to finish the season."It had to be the Mahler Eighth -- nothing else would do because nothing else brings so many things together," the music director says about the piece he has dreamed of conducting all his professional life and with which he will conclude the BSO's 75th anniversary season on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings in Meyerhoff Hall.

American Indians used them. So did ancient Egyptians.And today, three Carroll County gardens sport brand-new ones made yesterday by children in a workshop at Piney Run Nature Center.They're called scarecrows -- or scarebirds, or scarevarmints -- because, if they're made right, they can frighten any critter out of your garden.Any critter except a groundhog,that is."The whole secret is to have something that moves on your scarecrow," said Elaine Sweitzer, park naturalist and chief scarecrow-stuffer.

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.