Orchestra

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and its music director, Tadaaki Otaka, played at the Meyerhoff Tuesday night in the first of two concerts by visiting orchestras while the Baltimore Symphony is on its East Asia tour. Although this orchestra is no match for the BSO, it is a fine ensemble and it was a shame the hall was barely half-filled.The opening number was Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture," which was given a routine reading. There was was none of the passion or longing that can be brought to the music when one plays more than just notes.

NEW YORK -- Carnegie Hall put out the purple Monday night to welcome the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for the opening of Spring For Music, a week-long festival showcasing American orchestras playing adventurous programs. Ravens-colored cloths adorned the seat backs of the musicians' chairs and the conductor's podium; more cloths were handed out to audience members to wave on cue in a salute to Baltimore. That cue came before the music started when an announcer from local radio station  WQXR interviewed the BSO's high-profile booster, Gov. Martin O'Malley, onstage.

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.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has had its share of troubles over the years, including an embarrassing brush with bankruptcy, but things sure sound like they are looking up, way up, these days. Financial matters now seem more stable, and the hiring of a young dynamo from Montreal, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, as music director (this is his inaugural season) has sent a decidedly positive jolt into the organization. That electricity could be easily felt Wednesday night when the Philadelphians visited the Kennedy Center for a concert presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society . I'm still feeling a little tingly from the exposure.

The Vice Admiral Elliot Bryant and Miriam Bryant Distinguished Artist Series has brought performers of international stature to the Naval Academy in Annapolis for seven years, and this year's series is no exception.Russia's St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, which has attracted high-quality talent since its inception, opens the series Nov. 12 on the Alumni Hall stage.hTC Conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Kiril Kondrashin, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Simon Rattle have taken the podium with the orchestra since its founding in 1967, and soloists of the magnitude of pianist Murray Perahia and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich have dotted the ranks of its collaborating artists.

To someone who had eagerly anticipated hearing the young Norwegian pianist, Leif Ove Andsnes, yesterday's Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program in Meyerhoff Hall was something of a disappointment.There was nothing wrong with Andsnes' performance of Prokofiev's Concerto No. 3. In fact, it was terrific. He has the fingers for this piece, he has a simply enormous sound that never turns brittle and his athleticism eschews neither imagination or poetry. All that his performance lacked was the chill that one used to hear in the performances of pianists such as Byron Janis or that one hears today from Martha Argerich -- on the occasions when she shows up.But a performance of a concerto depends upon much more than the soloist.

The Concert Artists of Baltimore under conductor Edward Polochick have achieved a winning formula in combining choral and orchestral repertoire. Saturday's program, at LeClerc Hall at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, was a little different in that the chorus and orchestra offered separate sets of music.In this solid, professional series of concerts, one work usually crowns the evening. Saturday, the piece was a heavenly realization of Benjamin Britten's "Hymn to Saint Cecilia." Mr. Polochick and his singers presented this short choral symphony with taste and elan.

Daniele Gatti is traveling fast.The 35-year-old conductor and his orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, land at the Kennedy Center this afternoon for the final concert in one of the most whirlwind tours in symphonic history. In 22 days, they will have given 19 concerts, featuring six major works on three different programs, as they crisscrossed ,, the United States -- from New York to California and back again."Yessss -- verrry big tour," says the Milan-born musician, in whose fluent (if somewhat fractured)

Let it be known that the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra is in very capable hands.Scott Speck, in his debut concert at the helm, had his 56 musicians in excellent form Sunday evening in a program of Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Brahms and John Adams at Key Auditorium in Annapolis.Mr. Speck, 33, establishes a much different podium persona from that of his predecessor, Arne Running, the emotional Philadelphian who served the CYSO so well in his two seasons here. Where Mr. Running stomped the feet and stabbed the air to inspire his troops, Mr. Speck's kinder, gentler stick work coaxes the players in a less insistent manner.

PRAGUE, Czechoslovakia -- The Philadelphia Orchestra's concert here last night produced an explosive emotional outburst at the end that caught the musicians by surprise. Playing its first concert ever in Prague, the ensemble had programmed Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, "Eroica," and followed with a Russian work.The concert, part of the orchestra's current European tour, had been programmed when Czechoslovakia was still a Communist country. No one could have predicted what Beethoven's music would mean in a nation that has since turned its government upside down, whose people have chosen freedom and now grope toward some solid footing as a republic.

Anne Arundel Community College's Kauffman Theater at the Pascal Center for Performing Arts is proving to be fertile ground for people searching for entertainment bargains. The center offers such options as dance troupes, jazz ensembles, world-class guitar concerts and performances by the AACC Concert Band. The major spring concert season kicked off last weekend with classical concerts by the college's Symphony Orchestra and the Concert Choir and Chamber Singers. If these opening classical concerts signal the caliber of what lies ahead, music fans are in for a treat.

For at least a generation of pop-culture consumers, the soundtrack of their lives has included themes from the likes of Mega Man and Super Mario. As they've grown up, the music of video games has branched out - to solo piano, to rock concerts and to symphonic performances. Among the developments is the University of Maryland's Gamer Symphony Orchestra, whose 100-plus members will take to the stage at College Park's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on Saturday, May 4. "The quality of video-game music has grown exponentially over the years," says Joel Guttman, president-elect of the group, which specializes in arranging and performing pieces taken from the background music on video games such as Halo, Sonic the Hedgehog and Final Fantasy.

The Baltimore Symphony is about to become one of the very few, if not the first, major classical orchestras in the United States to officially appoint a playwright in residence. This weekend, Didi Balle will preside over the third of her "symphonic plays" to be performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The form, which Balle invented, combines a live orchestra, a conductor who delivers a scripted narrative and professional actors. In a news release, conductor Marin Alsop said that the appointment formalizes a relationship between Balle and the symphony that began in 2008.

With something like 17,000 attractive concerts scheduled in and around Baltimore last Sunday, I decided on just one, figuring that I would not be able to concentrate on too much music anyway, what with all the anticipation building for the "Mad Men" season-opener that night . (If I had known what a let-down that would be -- am I the only one who felt that a lot of Sunday's episode was padded and even, gasp, kind of dull? -- maybe I would have crammed in a few more.) My choice for musical diversion, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra's program at Kraushaar Auditorium winding up the ensemble's 2012-13 season, turned out to be a good one, thanks to Soheil Nasseri's performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. The California-born pianist has enjoyed a plaudit-generating career for more than a decade.

The Columbia Orchestra has been doing so well at the box office that it's giving people two opportunities to hear its Symphonic Pops concert this weekend. The concert on Saturday, March 16, at 7:30 p.m., will be repeated on Sunday, March 17, at 3 p.m., with both performances in the Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake High School. "Last year we sold out our pops concert, so this allows us to engage more people," explained Columbia Orchestra Music Director Jason Love. He noted that the added Sunday matinee should prove popular with senior citizens who prefer daytime driving.

I read Gina Eichman's letter praising parents' and teachers' commitment to their children's musical pursuits and in particular praising the efforts and ingenuity of the Howard County Gifted and Talented (GT) High School Orchestra. I second her praise and am an avid music supporter, as are my children. Unfortunately, the opportunity she references is not available to all young musicians in the county: Those students who attend private schools are prohibited from joining the county GT group.

The Internet, which connects people every millisecond in one way or another, has generated an entire orchestra from a cyber pool of strangers - aspiring players from 70 countries on six continents who uploaded more than 3,000 audition videos. The YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which bows April 15 in New York's famed Carnegie Hall with a concert led by esteemed conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, began online in December with an open invitation to players of all levels to try out for the ensemble.

David Zinman has signed a new four-year contract to continue as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The contract begins at the end of next season and keeps Zinman with the orchestra through 1997-1998. It makes his tenure, which began in 1985, one of the longest in recent American symphonic history."We have worked so hard and accomplished so much over the past eight years," said Zinman yesterday from San Francisco, where he was guest-conducting. "I am excited that we can now build further on that strong foundation."

Congratulations to the members of the Howard County Gifted and Talented High School Orchestra on their fine performance "Side by Side" with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday, Feb. 20 at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore. Howard County and Howard County Public Schools showed their support for our student musicians through the remarks and attendance of County Executive Ken Ulman, Superintendent Renee Foose and HCPSS Instructional Facilitator for Music, Rob White. Appreciation was expressed for the many involved in producing this remarkable experience, not the least of which was for the students' parents, who were praised for taking their children to many rehearsals.

The stage at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall stands under a four-story-high ceiling, commanding an auditorium that seats more than 2,400 — bigger than any hall most students in the Howard County Gifted and Talented Orchestra have ever played. Soon after they begin their rehearsal, the young musicians can hear, and feel, the difference. "You can feel how large the hall is when you play," said J.D. Fishman, 16, a trombonist and junior at Marriotts Ridge High School. "Everyone can feel that echo.