Rhapsody

There's an unmistakable Russian tint to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's 2002-2003 season -- 17 works by 11 Russian composers. But that's only part of the picture. Also providing color is a welcome sampling of pieces by contemporary composers, along with works by rather infrequently encountered masters of the past (more than a dozen pieces will get their first BSO performances). Putting the finishing touches on the season, as usual, will be lots of meat-and-potatoes music. The lineup lacks the extra excitement that, say, a world premiere can provide, but it has distinct strengths.

Just as converts to a religion can be the more zealous than those born into the faith, folks who adopt a new homeland can be the most patriotic, passionately embracing what natives may take for granted. The National Symphony Orchestra kicked off its fascinating, six-concert festival, Journey to America: A Musical Immigration, with two examples of such an embrace, along with a no less earnest salute from a part-time visitor. On top of all that were three different arrangements of "The Star-Spangled Banner," two by foreign-born conductors and the third by an American bandmaster with a thing for Wagner.

An American Rhapsody (Paramount, 2001) stars Tony Goldwyn and Nastassja Kinski as cultured Budapest parents who leave their infant daughter behind when they flee Stalinist Hungary in 1951 and aren't reunited with her until she is 6. By then, she has bonded indelibly with her Hungarian peasant guardians. Writer-director Eva Gardos is telling an autobiographical story, so you hope for the equivalent of a successful hypnosis - one that brings back, all at once, tactile details, psychological insights and the aura of a just-past era. Disappointingly, this picture provides little of that.

Every person is supposed to have at least one story to tell: his or her own. But that doesn't mean we all have the skill to do our stories justice. The writer-director of An American Rhapsody, Eva Gardos, does have an amazing tale. In 1951, her wealthy, cultured mother and father fled Budapest with her older sister. Because Eva was an infant and unfit to make the journey, they left her behind. Until age 6, she lived with a peasant couple who loved her as if she were their child. When the Red Cross helped reunite her with her parents in America, she found herself wondering if her real home was with them or with her guardians back in Hungary.

HOLLYWOOD - A decade ago, Eva Gardos was at a retreat with several friends including Eleanor Coppola, wife of director Francis Ford Coppola, and actress Colleen Camp. Each person was supposed to talk about herself - a prospect that made Gardos apprehensive. "I was really nervous about that time in my life about talking about myself," Gardos recalls. So she decided to get it out of the way and be the first to talk. Instead of discussing her current life, she suddenly felt compelled to recollect her unique childhood.

The harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler was 15 years old and trying to get a job with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in Manhattan when he met George Gershwin."

The music world loves a birthday party as much as anyone else, so it is with special pleasure that the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra pays homage to George Gershwin, America's songwriter supreme, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.All three youth orchestra ensembles will gather at 7: 30 p.m. Saturday in Maryland Hall in Annapolis for a performance that will conclude the organization's eighth year of concerts.Joining the senior orchestra ensemble and conductor Mark Allen McCoy will be guest pianist Daniel Lau, who will play "Rhapsody In Blue."

The word "improvisation" derives from the Latin improvisus ("unforeseen") and ex improviso ("without preparation") and musically denotes the art of a completely spontaneous performance.In Western music -- practically up to the advent of recorded sound -- improvisation was all but indistinguishable from the craft of composition. Long before they became famous as "composers," musicians as various as J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Saint-Saens and Bruckner first made their names as extraordinary improvisers.

Apple "interim" CEO Steve Jobs startled the Mac community last week when he announced yet another major shift in the direction of the Mac OS.This time the victim is Rhapsody, Apple's fully modern Mac operating system that was to replace Systems 7 and 8. The operating system is the underlying software that runs your Mac, just as Windows runs a PC. The jilted Rhapsody will yield to Mac OS X (that's the Roman numeral 10, not the letter "x") in 1999.Rhapsody was born of Apple's December 1996 acquisition of NeXT, Steve Jobs' post-Apple venture.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra opened a three-concert centennial tribute to George Gershwin this weekend with a concert performance of "Porgy and Bess" (1935), the American folk opera that may be his most enduring legacy -- except for "Rhapsody in Blue," "An American in Paris" and all those songs.It was grandly sung by a fine lineup of soloists and Morgan State University's 63-voice choir, which had been well prepared by Nathan Carter.The leads included Mark S. Doss as the irrepressible Porgy; Cynthia Haymon (on Friday)