Music Director

When Jose-Luis Novo auditioned for conductorship of the Annapolis Symphony last fall in an exotic, off-the-beaten-path program of Ravel, Falla and Kodaly, a lot of folks wondered what he would sound like in the musical mainstream. Last weekend, they got to hear him there as he returned to Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts as the new music director of the local orchestra for Wagner's Flying Dutchman Overture, Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, and the New World Symphony of Antonin Dvorak.

Leo Wanenchak has become music director of the Baltimore-based Children's Chorus of Maryland, succeeding Bruce Bryant. He has taken the position for a year while a national search is enacted.Wanenchak is also director of the Arts for Talented Youth program at the Peabody Institute of Music, which allows proficient young musicians to study with teachers from the college-level Peabody Conservatory.He was formerly organist and director of music at Central Presbyterian Church in Baltimore.Another winPeabody alumna Bin Huang, a 26-year-old violinist from Hunan, China, won fourth place in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow this summer.

Who would have thought it? A line of eager, would-be subscribers snaking around Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, waiting for the box office to open on the first day of sales for next season. A big corporation giving big bucks to underwrite an extraordinary $25-per-ticket subscription deal (hence the line around Meyerhoff). Musicians using words like "fabulous" and "energized" to describe the mood in the orchestra. Are you sure we're talking about the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra? The one that was in danger of financial ruin?

The Annapolis Symphony's 2003-2004 concert season, cobbled together quickly in the wake of the orchestra's decision to part company with conductor Leslie Dunner, yielded only two bona fide candidates for the permanent conductorship of the orchestra. They are Lara Webber, the former assistant conductor of the Baltimore Symphony, and Emil de Cou, the current assistant with Washington's National Symphony Orchestra. Now the plot will thicken as the new concert season opens and the search committee begins sizing up several additional candidates.

She was playing piano at age 2, violin at age 5 and by age 7 she was in preschool at Juilliard, but it wasn't until she was 9 that Marin Alsop decided she wanted to be a conductor. The only child of two professional musicians, Alsop - who today will be named music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra - was both prodigy and progeny, and when her father took her to a New York City concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein, her career plans became clear. The dream didn't fit in that well with reality: Women were virtually unheard of as conductors.

The Baltimore Symphony last week announced a "Grand Celebration" concert to commemorate the 10-year partnership between the orchestra and music director David Zinman.Appearing with the orchestra for the concert -- to be held at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 7 at the Meyerhoff -- will be pianist Leon Fleisher, violinists Pamela Frank, Cho-Liang Lin, Elmar Oliveira and BSO concertmaster Herbert Greenberg. Members of the BSO will also perform musical vignettes.Tickets are on sale now, and proceeds will benefit the Baltimore Symphony Musicians' Pension Fund.

A trio of new recordings by David Zinman showcases the music director of the Baltimore Symphony and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra in the roles in which he shines most brightly: as a champion of 20th-century music (an all-Leonard Bernstein disc with the BSO on the London label); as a sensitive collaborator in concertos (the Gershwin and Ravel G major concertos with pianist Helene Grimaud and the BSO on Erato); and as a stimulating interpreter of Beethoven (in performances of Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6 with the Zurich orchestra on Arte Nova Classics, a new super-budget label distributed by BMG Classics)

Emotions run deep in Mother Russia's musical idiom, and Leslie Dunner's encounter with them as an undergraduate engineering student proved to be a life-changing association. "I wasn't happy with engineering," the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra's music director recalled, "and it was through Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and others that I came to grips with that unhappiness and decided on a life in music. The music of Russia was my liberating force." These, too, are emotional times for the conductor who will conclude his five-year tenure with the local orchestra this weekend with an all-Russian program at Maryland Hall.

Edo de Waart admits that when he was invited to become music director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra six years ago, "besides kangaroos and koalas, I didn't know much about Australia."Nevertheless, the Dutch conductor arrives at the Kennedy Center this evening as the music director of that orchestra in its 11-city, coast-to-coast American tour. Although Sydney's is the finest of Australia's major orchestras, it is still something of a surprise that de Waart, 60, should be its music director.

The Arundel Vocal Arts Society embarks on its 21st season with a number of changes - in musical director and in locations of rehearsals and performances. Glenette Schumacher, who has served as music director since 1994, announced last spring that she will be taking a year off to pursue graduate studies. After a rigorous selection process that included the two finalists conducting a rehearsal, Betty-Ann Lynerd was chosen to direct the Annapolis-based chorus during the 2004-05 season. "We're excited about this change," said volunteer and AVAS president Sandra Boyd.