Tchaikovsky

Baltimore School for the Arts will hold its annual orchestra concert at 7 p.m. today in the school's Schaefer Ballroom, 712 Cathedral St. Tickets are $6 for adults and $4 for students. Works by Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi and Mozart will be featured in the debut of the school's new conductor, Ruben Capriles. Information: 410-625-0403, or www.bsfa.org.

Gunther Herbig is one of the few modern conductors as much concerned with beauty of sound as with accuracy of rhythm, intonation and of the notes themselves. There have been occasions in the past when Herbig has sacrificed dramatic excitement in his painstaking avoidance of making an ugly sound. Last night, when Herbig conducted the Baltimore Symphony in Meyerhoff Hall, was not one of them.His performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F Minor was as dazzling and fresh as it was beautiful.

This review appeared in late editions of Saturday's Sun.Gunther Herbig is one of the few modern conductors as much concerned with beauty of sound as with accuracy of rhythm, intonation and of the notes themselves. There have been occasions in the past when Herbig has sacrificed dramatic excitement in his painstaking avoidance of making an ugly sound. Friday night, when Herbig conducted the Baltimore Symphony in Meyerhoff Hall, was not one of them.His performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F Minor was as dazzling and fresh as it was beautiful.

In a mailing to subscribers today, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra announces details of its Summer MusicFest programs in Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and its outdoor concerts at Oregon Ridge Park.Summer MusicFest, the BSO's five-concert series at the Meyerhoff, begins June 16 with the festival's artistic director, renowned violinist-conductor Pinchas Zukerman, as soloist and conductor in Vivaldi's "Four Seasons."Joining Zukerman in four programs, featuring chamber and orchestral works by Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, will be such well-known soloists as pianist Jon Kimura Parker and cellist Gary Hoffman, as well as soloists from the ranks of the orchestra.

My initial professional training was in literary studies, my first job was teaching Renaissance poetry and drama to university undergraduate and graduate students and now I write primarily about music. It's no surprise, therefore, that I'm often asked which I prefer -- words or music?That's an impossible question to answer -- unless the context is that of a solitary existence on a desert island. In that situation -- one without electricity, presumably -- I figure that I'd be better off with volumes of Milton and Shakespeare than with CDs of Chopin and Mozart.

Two great artists from the same time and country always invite comparison. This is as true in music as other fields. Thus we compare (as well as pair) Bach and Handel, Mozart and Haydn, Wagner and Brahms, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and tantalize ourselves with desert- island thoughts about which of the two we would take, if we could only have one.Such considerations were inspired this season by productions of the two greatest operas by Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. In less than two months, there have been productions of Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" (Washington Opera)

I'm so sick of self-absorbed, camera and cell phone-toting yuppies, I can't see straight.Just the other week, a gaggle of parents nearly ruined Peabody Prep's excellent production of "The Boyfriend" by bathing Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in the light of countless flashbulbs even as the performers were doing their best to proceed with the show.Saturday, another set of misguided baby boomers mistook a concert of Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, Mascagni and Mozart for their own personal photo op and proceeded to disrupt a perfectly lovely concert by the three Chesapeake Youth Orchestras.

It wasn't what I heard at the Tchaikovsky Competition this summer in Moscow that made me worry about musical standards in Russia. It is what I smelled.Imagine sitting in the Meyerhoff to listen to the world's best young pianists and the entire hall smelling as the bathrooms used to at Memorial Stadium on a sultry August afternoon.The Tchaikovsky - which includes contests in piano, violin, cello and voice - is held every four years to honor Russia's greatest composer. For pianists, particularly, it is the world's most prestigious contest.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 is a difficult piece to hold together: a gigantic and weighty first movement that is followed by a brief, if ferocious, scherzo; and a pensive third movement, ending in a ghostly passage for flute and piccolo, that is followed by a drunkenly joyous finale that sounds almost as if it could be by Haydn.There are echoes of other works -- Liszt's "Faust" Symphony, Mahler's Symphony No. 2 and even Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata -- but the Tenth is an utterly original work, as great as it is difficult.

NEW YORK -- The Kirov Opera's production of Tchaikovsky's "Mazeppa" Friday evening -- the third of four Russian operas presented by the St. Petersburg company in its three-week residence at the Metropolitan Opera -- raised some questions about the standard operatic repertory in the West.We Westerners pride ourselves on our taste, cultivation and sophistication. But we listen season after season to the same "Bohemes," "Traviatas" and "Dutchmen" -- some of them masterpieces, some not -- and, for the most part, are utterly unfamiliar with an opera as great as "Mazeppa."

Although it's convenient for some to think of music being divided into totally separate worlds, with the classical variety way over in some isolated corner where only the "elite" indulge in it, there are innumerable connecting, welcoming points between genres. One mission of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's new season is to emphasize such links, programming works that reveal roots planted in folk music or jazz, for example. Last week, bluegrass found its way into the picture via a concerto by Jennifer Higdon featuring a hotshot crossover trio; this week, the folk influences behind familiar pieces by Tchaikovsky and Bartok are being given fresh attention.

The first time violinist James Ehnes visited Baltimore, it was to catch a game at Camden Yards. Don't hold it against him, but he was rooting for the Red Sox. He's been a fan since he was a kid, when his father would drive him to Boston from their home in Canada. "The highlight was going to Fenway Park," Ehnes says. This week, he'll try for a musical homer with his 1715 Stradivarius, playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. At his BSO debut in 2007, performing a Mozart concerto, Ehnes left quite an impression with his refined technique, sweet tone and elegant phrase-making.

He writes verse, and one of his poems won an international poetry competition. He paints, and one of his works was displayed on the Web site of a major British newspaper. He blogs for another major British newspaper. He composes music that gets performed in high-profile places. He's the author of a book on prayer. Oh yes, and Stephen Hough also plays the piano. Brilliantly, incisively, compellingly. The British keyboard artist and 21st-century Renaissance man, a recipient of a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship (the so-called "genius grant")

Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky never quite got the whole self-assurance thing. The composer typically disparaged his own music at one point or another, as he did in 1892, after finishing a ballet that he called "infinitely poorer than The Sleeping Beauty," which he had written a couple of years earlier. "I have no doubt about it," he wrote a friend. To another, he just said: "This old chap's getting worn out." What Tchaikovsky didn't know was that he had composed what would become the most widely beloved and performed of all ballets - The Nutcracker.

Marin Alsop is back in town for her first Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concerts since last month's sensational production of Leonard Bernstein's Mass that won over audiences and quite a few critics in New York and Washington, as well as right here. The conductor will lead two performances of a full-length program this weekend at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, as well as introduce a new series there called "Off the Cuff." This latest BSO product has Alsop's name all over it. The concept is simple: one work of music, preceded by a discussion of it, all packaged together in 90, intermission-less minutes or less.

Classical BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA : 8 p.m. Thursday. Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda. $25 to $60. Call 410-783-8000 or go to bsomusic.org. Tchaikovsky's music, with its passionate melodies and vivid instrumental coloring, seems to go particularly well with the heat of summer. Orchestras almost everywhere can be counted on to turn on the Tchaikovsky at this time of year, and not just his 1812 Overture, which just got its usual workout on the Fourth of July.

With energy and passion, the Anne Arundel Community College Orchestra offered a spring concert that lived up to its title, "Finale With Fire!" Much of the credit has to go to Anna Binneweg, who became the AACC Orchestra's director and conductor and a teacher in fall 2006. Since then, the ensemble has nearly doubled in size to 64. A quarter of the musicians remain from 2006, indicating membership stability. Most of the horn section remains intact, along with flutes and trumpets and two trombonists, and there are also at least five of the 2006 violinists.

Murder mystery The lowdown -- Watch a performance of The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie's famous murder mystery. The plot revolves around strangers stranded at a boarding house during a snowstorm who become suspects in a murder investigation. Audiences will try to guess the killer as a detective unravels the case. The theatre's 10-year anniversary reprise of the British whodunit will run tomorrow through Feb. 3. If you go -- Showtimes are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $18 for adults and $15 for students, seniors and Baltimore Theatre Alliance members.

Baltimore School for the Arts will hold its annual orchestra concert at 7 p.m. today in the school's Schaefer Ballroom, 712 Cathedral St. Tickets are $6 for adults and $4 for students. Works by Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi and Mozart will be featured in the debut of the school's new conductor, Ruben Capriles. Information: 410-625-0403, or www.bsfa.org.

When it comes to gala season-openers, the National Symphony Orchestra knows how to deliver. The annual tradition comes complete with a grand ball for Washington's well-heeled and well-positioned, but it lets just plain, non-black-tie folks in on the action at ordinary prices during a concert beforehand. To get the 2006-2007 season officially rolling, the NSO packed them into the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Sunday night for what might have been a ho-hum all-Tchaikovsky program. It was hardly that.