Tchaikovsky

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.

Lang Lang. Works by Haydn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Balakirev, Rachmaninoff. (Telarc CD-80524) This sit-up-and-take-notice recital disc, recorded live at Tanglewood's Seiji Ozawa Hall, makes plain why there's such a buzz about the 18-year-old pianist named Lang Lang. He has built much of his reputation on large-scale, virtuoso repertoire, and Rachmaninoff's Sonata No. 2 certainly gives him plenty of opportunity to show that side of his talent. But the opening Haydn sonata has even more to say about Lang Lang's ability and continued promise.

Some of Maryland's finest young musicians will come together Saturday evening when the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra presents its Gala Spring Concert at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in Annapolis. The 7 p.m. concert will be led by the orchestra's music director, David Ik-Sung Choo, who will conduct works by Tchaikovsky, Lalo and Beethoven in addition to the "Elegy" composed by Raymond Weidner, composer and choirmaster at Woods Memorial Presbyterian Church in Severna Park. Soloing in the first movement of Edouard Lalo's sultry "Symphonie Espagnole" will be violinist Robert Burnett, 17, of Bowie, winner of this season's Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition.

All knowledgeable musicians know intellectually that the compositions of Franz Schubert are imbued with the spirit of song. But the minute many modern interpreters get their hands on his music, they head straight for the jugular with slashing attacks, inelegant minuets and ungainly crescendos popping up anywhere and everywhere. One of the nicest things about the Ying Quartet, which performed Saturday evening at Smith Theatre in Columbia under the aegis of the Candlelight Concerts Society, is that it kept dear Franz's Opus 125 true to scale; poised, charming and eminently singable.

"Music is not illusion," Tchaikovsky reportedly said, "but revelation." Last evening at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, his Violin Concerto turned out to be exactly that - a revelation. Yes, it was, on paper, the same Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto that has been played a trillion times or more since its premiere in 1881. But it wasn't really the same work at all. The notes took on new coloring, new intensity, new depth in a memorable performance featuring Midori with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and music director Yuri Temirkanov.

When you are a child, snow is a wondrous gift. It brings days of freedom from teachers and schoolbooks. It means snowmen, sledding, stockpiling snowy weapons, ambushes of your brother, feathery angels etched in white on white. When you are older, snow - like almost everything - becomes more complicated. It paints tree branches with a silvery brush and glistens on porch steps and sidewalks like frosting on a wedding cake. But be careful; one misstep and you're flat on your back. It's damp and heavy as you scoop a path from door to car. Schools are closed and day-care can be hard to find.

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.

"Nothing came out but muck." That's how Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky described his "vigorous but vain efforts" in April 1891, to work on a new ballet score and new opera, which were to form a double bill of fantasy and fairy tale at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg. The ballet, "The Nutcracker," would become one of his most enduring creations; the opera, "Iolanta," one of his least appreciated. The fate of the one-act "Iolanta," especially in the West, doesn't sit well with those who have fallen under its subtle spell, such as Yuri Temirkanov.

The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra will open its 40th anniversary season this weekend at Maryland Hall with two of the masterworks of the symphonic repertoire. Music director Leslie B. Dunner will be on the podium for the Friday and Saturday evening concerts, which will offer Beethoven's sublimely lyrical Violin Concerto in tandem with the galvanic Fourth Symphony by Tchaikovsky. Playing the concerto will be Colin Jacobsen, a recent graduate of The Juilliard School, who at age 14 performed solo with the New York Philharmonic in Max Bruch's "Scottish Fantasy."

When Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, the one nicknamed "Pathetique," was first heard on Oct. 16, 1893, the St. Petersburg audience had mixed reactions. The slow, somber conclusion of the work, in particular, caused some puzzlement. But when, eight days later, the composer died, the "Pathetique" suddenly took on new significance. It was now considered a profound swan-song, a requiem for Tchaikovsky himself. And then the conspiracy theories started. Surely, a composer who could write such sad music just before dying must have had either a premonition of his demise or, better yet, a wish to die. That's why he deliberately drank a glass of unboiled water at a restaurant, even though he knew there was a cholera scare in town!