Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky, Trio in A minor (Opus 50), Rachmaninoff, Trio No. 1 in G minor, performed by the Moscow Conservatory Trio (CMH Records CD-8020); Beethoven, Trio in C minor (Opus, No. BTC 3), Brahms, Trio in B major (Opus 8), performed by the Moscow Conservatory Trio (CMH Records CD-8021).Few chamber music releases this year have given me as much pleasure as these discs from the Moscow Conservatory Trio.Shriver Hall Concert Series subscribers probably recall the concert last season in which the trio (pianist Paul Ostrovsky, violinist Dmitri Berlinsky and cellist Suren Bagratuni)

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.

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.

The Columbia Orchestra will commence its 26th season Saturday evening at Jim Rouse Theatre and, fitting for this time of year, a pair of autumnal masterworks will dominate the proceedings. "Each is an extraordinary valedictory statement," says conductor Jason Love of Tchaikovsky's final work, the alternately graceful and brooding 6th Symphony, subtitled Pathetique, and Elgar's grand, noble and deeply felt Cello Concerto, the last major composition by the English master. "Both pieces contain interludes of grief," says Love, who begins his fifth year at the Columbia helm with this weekend's concert, "but each has its share of gorgeous, even fun, moments."

Jason Love, conductor of the Columbia Orchestra, is a musician who sticks to his interpretive guns. He conducts a community orchestra that, while studded with talented players, is not really a full-blown professional ensemble, especially in the upper-string departments. So when putting his troops through their paces in, say, Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony, Love might well have selected a moderate, straight-ahead approach to round off some of the jagged technical edges a more individualized traversal of the score would reveal.

There's a wonderful symmetry to Christmas and the arts in that each of the genres has been ceded proprietary control of at least one Yuletide blockbuster. In the literary realm, Charles Dickens comes by each and every December to tell us of Mr. Scrooge's annual rendezvous with the three spirits who transform terminal humbuggery into a life of fulfillment in just a few incandescent chapters. Musically, there is George Frederick Handel's oratorio Messiah, which imparts vintage pomp and pageantry to the Christmas season with sterling choruses such as the mighty "Hallelujah."

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."

When the gentle heroine of Tchaikovsky's one-act opera "Iolanta" gained the gift of sight during the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's presentation of the work Thursday evening, she wasn't the only one who saw the light. From the sound of the roaring ovation after the performance, many listeners had their eyes opened by the captivating beauty of this widely neglected opera. Don't miss the remaining opportunity to be similarly enlightened tonight at Meyerhoff Hall. BSO music director Yuri Temirkanov's ardent belief in "Iolanta" was palpable during every measure Thursday.

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")

* Russian-born author Nina Nikolaevna Berberova, 82, who left her homeland in 1922 and returned decades later as an American citizen, died Sunday in Philadelphia. Her writings include her autobiography. Her writings include her autobiography, "The Italics Are Mine"; a 1937 biography of Tchaikovsky; a play, "Madame"; and a novel, "The Accompanist."