Raveling

LOS ANGELES -- Southern Cal basketball coach George Raveling has been moved to intensive care because of internal chest bleeding, a USC University Hospital spokeswoman said yesterday.The move was said to be precautionary.Raveling, 57, suffered nine broken ribs, a broken pelvis, a broken collarbone and a slightly collapsed lung when his vehicle was demolished Sept. 25 in a traffic accident in Los Angeles.Raveling was listed in serious but stable condition.

It is possible to quibble with the idea of cramming three blockbuster works into a single program, but the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra carries it off. Ravel's "Bolero," that brilliant study in rhythmic and melodic reiteration, not to mention crescendo, is more likely to serve as a concert finale than a curtain-raiser for Tchaikovsky's barnstorming Piano Concerto No. 1. But here they are, back to back. And after two of classical music's greatest hits, why not one more? Well, at least one of classical music's greatest minutes — the introductory passage of Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra," now more commonly identified as the theme from the sci-fi classic "2001.

George Raveling has been in the college basketball coaching business for a long time. He is a realist and, as such, does not believe in useless sentiment going into tonight's game between his Southern California Trojans and Maryland at Cole Field House.Twenty years ago, Raveling was an assistant to then-Maryland coach Lefty Driesell. Under his leadership, the Terrapin freshman team of 1971 that included such future luminaries as Len Elmore and Tom McMillen went 16-0.But that was 20 years and 3,000 miles ago, and Raveling swears tonight's contest (7:30 p.m., WBAL-AM 1090)

Candlelight Concerts presents the acclaimed Trio Solisti at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre in a program that includes Turina's Trio No. 2, Ravel's Piano Trio and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. All of Trio Solisti's members (violinist Maria Bachmann, cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach and pianist Jon Klibonoff) enjoy prestigious solo careers with orchestras, music festivals and chamber groups throughout the United States. Together as Trio Solisti, they have been praised for their adventurous, passionate and technically brilliant performances.

For the first time in 25 years, George Raveling isn't pacing a sideline and taking in the thrill a moment that is coaching college basketball.And his life has never been better."

NEW YORK -- Calling himself "naive" in such matters, CBS basketball analyst Billy Packer yesterday restated his apology for referring to Georgetown guard Allen Iverson as a "tough monkey" Saturday.At the same time, Packer bristled at notions -- published and broadcast -- that he is a racist."What I did on the air -- when it was brought to my attention, because I didn't even think about it -- I apologized for anybody who was sensitive to what I said. I apologized and I'm sorry for it," said Packer, during a break in a seminar for CBS announcers and production staff who will work this month's NCAA tournament.

LOS ANGELES -- There were times after Thursday's Southern California-UCLA game when George Raveling sounded downright presidential."I'm happy for the people of Los Angeles County," Raveling, USC's coach, said earnestly to a caucus of Los Angeles reporters after the Trojans' sweep of the Bruins. "They got to see two wonderful basketball teams play their hearts off for 40minutes . . . never give anything less than their best."In a community that's primarily dominated by professional athletics, it's refreshing to get college basketball back into a competitive atmosphere that demands a sellout.

LOS ANGELES -- Southern Cal coach George Raveling was startled yesterday morning when he saw that his 25th-ranked Trojans were listed as 15 1/2 -point underdogs in their game against second-ranked UCLA at Pauley Pavilion."

Coppin State's Fang Mitchell and UMBC's Earl Hawkins said yesterday that they will join fellow members of the Black Coaches Association in a proposed boycott of next week's National Association of Basketball Coaches' Issues Forum in Charlotte, N.C."I think it's the first step in getting our message across," said Mitchell, who, along with Hawkins, was to be among an estimated 100 black Division I head coaches attending the first NABC forum, a three-day meeting scheduled to begin Monday.The message sent out this week by BCA executive director Rudy Washington and other members of his organization is clear: Recent and imminent NCAA legislation that cuts scholarship limitations, raises academic standards and sets a maximum salary for restrictive-earnings coaches at $16,000 a year reduces the opportunities black athletes have at getting a college education and prospective coaches have at pursuing their chosen careers.

At the Ruck Funeral Home in Towson one night this week the conversation turned to Naval Academy basketball. Naturally.The visitors there were paying last respects to Don Lange, who, in the 1950s, was one of Navy's all-time great basketball players.A former Marine who moved back to Baltimore with his wife six years ago, Lange died suddenly of a heart attack last Saturday. He was 64."In my youngster [sophomore] year, I was really looking forward to playing with Don, who was a senior," said Dave Smalley, who played at Navy then, coached the team from 1966 to 1976 and is now an assistant athletic director at the academy.

Long before the French developed a distaste for American influences on their culture, they took a dim view of things German. Starting early in the 19th century, composers revealed a particular penchant for breaking away from rules of harmony and expectations about melody or structure, as codified by Bach and his artistic descendants. No note of Berlioz or Debussy could ever be thought of as Germanic. In another winning program of the Shriver Hall Concert Series, which is having a remarkably strong season, two French ensembles shared the stage Sunday evening to celebrate this wonderfully stubborn streak of national pride.

Music lovers with a bit of mileage on them remember the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande fondly from the palmy days of the "Long Playing Record" (LP) when, under the baton of its founding conductor Ernest Ansermet, the Swiss orchestra made numerous recordings for London Records. Still based in Geneva, the orchestra maintains a lower international profile these days. But, as was demonstrated Tuesday night at the Naval Academy's Alumni Hall, the Suisse Romande remains a formidable ensemble under the baton of its chief conductor and artistic director, Pinchas Steinberg.

Most of us, when we contemplate a beautiful work of art, are content to leave it at that - contemplation. Others, like the art students you see with their easels in museums, try to re-create the object, not just for educational and training benefits, but as a way to experience something of the original artist's creative process. Then there are those who go one step further and put themselves deeply into the work, use it as a starting point for fashioning a new artistic creation. Composer Steven Burke did this in a recent piece called Altars, which pays homage to well-known piano trios by Beethoven, Schubert and Ravel by incorporating themes from each.

The devil, in various guises, cavorted through the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Summer MusicFest program Wednesday evening at Meyerhoff Hall, providing a helluva good time. There was Mephistopheles, stirring up hormones in Liszt's Mephisto Waltz. And Paganini, the violinist/composer whose ability to zip through fiendishly difficult music had people convinced he had sold his soul to Beelzebub. And Till Eulenspiegel, the devilish prankster from the Middle Ages immortalized in a Richard Strauss tone poem.

Baltimore is not the only city outside Russia to enjoy having Yuri Temirkanov regularly conduct the hometown orchestra. Listeners in Copenhagen, Denmark, got their dose of Yuri-mania a year earlier than Baltimoreans, as Temirkanov assumed the position of principal guest conductor of the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1998. His arrival there was greeted with the same sort of critical huzzahs that followed Temirkanov's debut as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's music director in January.

Two gifted young musicians from the Howard County public school system will take center stage at the Smith Theatre at 2 p.m. Sunday when the Columbia Orchestra presents a program of music by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Ravel and Frank Martin. Flutist Martha Cargo and violinist Xinzi Liu are this year's winners of the annual Young Artist Competition sponsored by the orchestra. The pair of accomplished young musicians was chosen from a field of 23 applicants after submitting to a preliminary audition and performing a solo recital.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Kansas coach Roy Williams is considered one of the rising stars in his profession, but in 1979 he was a high school coach who took a pay cut to become a part-time assistant under Dean Smith at North Carolina.It is one of the main reasons Williams is upset with legislation passed at the NCAA's winter convention earlier this year in Anaheim, Calif., that will cut out the part-time assistant's job at the Division I level, beginning next season."If it weren't for the third assistant's job, I wouldn't be in college coaching," Williams said yesterday.

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)

Think about it: Had anyone suggested before the season that this Maryland men's basketball team would win 21 games, finish in a tie for fourth in the Atlantic Coast Conference, advance to the semifinals of the ACC tournament, get a player on the All-America third team and draw a fifth seed in any region in the NCAA tournament, well, just say that serious counseling would have been in order.All of that did happen, yet nearly everyone who was on the Terps' bandwagon in those heady January days is running for cover as Maryland prepares to play the College of Charleston in tonight's first round of the NCAA tournament (Channel 13, 7: 50)