Violin Concerto

Shortly after signing a new five-year contract that will keep her in the post of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director until 2015, Marin Alsop led the ensemble in a hefty program Thursday night that included the East Coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto. Written for Baltimore's own classical music star, Hilary Hahn, it's a killer of a concerto for the soloist, and it asks a lot of listeners, too. Cast in three movements, the half-hour concerto makes a grand statement, packed with thematic material and expansive development, all of it delivered with extraordinarily prismatic colors.

When violinist Benjamin Beilman performs for the Candlelight Concert Society on Saturday, Nov. 10, at 8 p.m. at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre, he'll surely be one of the younger people in the house. That's because this 22-year-old Curtis Institute graduate is off to a precocious start with his professional career. Helping give him a boost are the performance prizes he has received from the Buffalo Chamber Music Society, Friends of Music Concerts in New York and Howard County's own Candlelight Concert Society.

Talk about ingrates!When Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky completed his Piano Concerto No. 1, he consulted with Nikolai Rubinstein, the Russian keyboard virtuoso he hoped would premiere the work. The pianist haughtily told Tchaikovsky his piece was "impossible" and would have to be revised, if not gutted, before any self-respecting artist would play it.Tchaikovsky did make some changes, but not before he snatched the concerto back from Rubinstein and rededicated it to Hans von Bulow who gave its resoundingly successful premiere Oct. 25, 1875, in Boston.

Shortly after signing a new five-year contract that will keep her in the post of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director until 2015, Marin Alsop led the ensemble in a hefty program Thursday night that included the East Coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto. Written for Baltimore's own classical music star, Hilary Hahn, it's a killer of a concerto for the soloist, and it asks a lot of listeners, too. Cast in three movements, the half-hour concerto makes a grand statement, packed with thematic material and expansive development, all of it delivered with extraordinarily prismatic colors.

And still they come. Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman are now grand old men of the violin, with a burgeoning younger generation - Gil Shaham, Midori, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Hilary Hahn, Joshua Bell, Pamela Frank, Maxim Vengerov, Cho-Liang Lin, Kennedy, Sarah Chang, and the rest - already installed alongside them at the pinnacle of their profession. Can the market bear additional violinists? Well, why not? Musical talent is rather like pitching: You can't have too much of it. So adding her name to the mix these days is Icelandic violinist Judith Ingolfsson, who comes to Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in the state capital this weekend to open the 2001-2002 season with Leslie B. Dunner's Annapolis Symphony Orchestra.

The music world owes 19th-century violinist Joseph Joachim a tremendous debt of gratitude.This great fiddler was a musical purist who stayed true to the highest callings of his art in an age of virtuosic excess. It was Joachim who, at midcentury, went against the grain to champion Beethoven's celestial but unflashy Violin Concerto. He played it everywhere, composed a cadenza for the first movement that most violinists still play, and saw to it that Beethoven's handiwork would forever be seen as one of the supreme musical accomplishments.

Hilary Hahn Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto; Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1. Hilary Hahn, violinist; Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra; Hugh Wolff and Marek Janowski, conductors. (Sony Classical SK 89921) ; Poor

All concerts are at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, 801 Chase St., Annapolis. Curtain for all subscription concerts is 8 p.m. For subscription orders and information, call 410-263- 0907. GALA OPENING CONCERT Aug. 27 Leslie B. Dunner, conductor Hilary Hahn, violin Margaret Batjer, violin Grieg: Holberg Suite Bach: Violin Concerto in E Bach: Double Violin Concerto in D minor Turina: Oracion del Torero Elgar: Serenade in E minor CLASSIC SUBSCRIPTION SERIES Sept. 27 and 28 Leslie B. Dunner, conductor Daniel Lee, cello Wagner: "Rienzi" Overture Haydn: Cello Concerto in D Prokofieff: Romeo and Juliet (excerpts)

The Baltimore Symphony's principal oboist is one of the orchestra's most admired players -- and for good reason. In an orchestral performance, he can play a familiar solo -- such as the oboe's melody in the slow movement of Brahms' Violin Concerto -- and make listeners feel that they have never before properly heard it. Joseph Turner rarely makes solo appearances, and when he does, they are not to be missed.Joseph Turner's recital is Sunday at 3: 30 p.m. at the Second Presbyterian Church, 4200 St. Paul St. Admission is free.

In the pantheon of composers, Mozart will always have a seat of honor -- perhaps the seat. He represents a pinnacle of melodic inspiration and elegance of craftsmanship, not to mention sheer aural enjoyment. To close its annual Summer MusicFest tomorrow, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will focus exclusively on Mozart, with guest conductor Gerard Schwarz on the podium. This longtime music director of the Seattle Symphony and conductor laureate of New York's Mostly Mozart Festival has chosen two symphonies as the program's bookends and a violin concerto in between -- all works from the years when the composer worked, not too happily, for a prince-archbishop in Salzburg.

A comment posted by a viewer on one of violinist Hilary Hahn's many YouTube videos sums up her appeal neatly: "You're just too cool, Hilary :)" The stellar 29-year-old fiddler, still based in Baltimore, where she grew up and started her musical training, has her own YouTube channel. It features informal Q&A sessions with viewers and disarming clips Hahn films in her dressing room or other spots when she's on the road. "I meet these neat people, and doing interviews is a way I get to know them," Hahn says from Vienna, Austria.

"I wanted to write something that reaches people," says composer Jonathan Leshnoff. The result of that desire, Requiem for the Fallen, receives its premiere tomorrow by the Handel Choir of Baltimore and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. The score, which incorporates traditional Latin and Hebrew liturgical texts, poems from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and a well-known prayer attributed to St. Francis, commemorates both military and civilian casualties of war. Leshnoff, a faculty member at Towson University and the BCO's composer in residence, does not specify which war. "The piece could apply to anything," he says.

There were several reasons to look forward to the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra's final concert of the 2006-2007 season. One of the main reasons was the appearance of violinist Jennifer Koh as soloist. The last time Koh, an artist trained at Oberlin College and Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, appeared with the ASO was 1999, when she collaborated with conductor Leslie Dunner in a Barber violin concerto that was the highlight of the former maestro's tenure with the orchestra. News of her return to Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts to play a Sibelius concerto with Jose-Luis Novo on the podium did not go unnoticed.

Hearty applause, booming cheers and standing ovations are not exactly rare at concerts of Beethoven or Tchaikovsky or Mahler around here, but for brand-new works by unfamiliar composers? That's a different story. Audiences aren't too easily stirred by contemporary music, so the sight and sound of a Baltimore Chamber Orchestra crowd leaping up to cheer a local premiere last winter proved remarkable. Luckily, for those who missed that performance of the Violin Concerto by Jonathan Leshnoff - and for those who were there and would like to relive the experience - there will be a reprise Tuesday at Towson University, presented by the school's department of music.

If you're traveling about the country during the next few weeks, don't be surprised if you bump into a major player from Baltimore's cultural stage: Marin Alsop, music director-to-be of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She's conducting from coast-to-coast, starting tonight, when she leads the New York Philharmonic in a free concert on the Great Lawn of Central Park. Despite the heat wave, this may turn out to be one of the cooler spots in Manhattan. Alsop has programmed a fun piece by John Adams, The Chairman Dances, derived from his opera Nixon in China, and Beethoven's evergreen Symphony No. 5. In between will be Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, with Leila Josefowicz, a fast-rising young talent on today's scene, as soloist.

Collaboration may become the theme of the 2005-2006 music season. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Shriver Hall Concert Series have announced new programs in conjunction with the Baltimore Museum of Art. Now the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra has upped the ante by announcing a season built around partnerships with five local "flagship cultural institutions" -- the BMA, Walters Art Museum, Maryland Zoo, Maryland Science Center and National Aquarium....

Samuel Barber, Violin Concerto; William Walton, Violin Concerto; Ernest Bloch, "Baal Shem"; performed by Joshua Bell, violin, the Baltimore Symphony and David Zinman, conductor (London 452 851-2) Barber, Violin Concerto, Piano Concerto, "Souvenirs," performed by Robert McDuffie (Violin Concerto), Jon Kimura Parker (Piano Concerto), the Atlanta Symphony and Yoel Levi, conductor (Telarc CD-80441)In 1962, no one would have predicted that, 35 years later, Samuel Barber's relatively early (1941)

Beethoven, Violin Concerto in D, performed by David Oistrakh and the Stockholm Festival Orchestra, Sixten Ehrling conducting, Sibelius, Violin Concerto in D Minor, performed by Oistrakh and the Stockholm Festival Orchestra, Ehrling conducting (Testament SBT 1032): It is now more than 20 years since Oistrakh died during a visit to Amsterdam at the age of 66. His position as the greatest violinist to come out of Russia since the 1917 revolution remains unchallenged; of the great violinists of this about-to-be-concluded century, only Jascha Heifetz seriously rivals him in renown.

Youth Orchestra Young people may not flock to classical music concerts in droves, but, fortunately, a whole bunch of talented students still want to express themselves through classical music. Conservatories and college music departments have yet to report any drop-off in applications for admission. And a lot of those applicants developed their interest in the art form through participation in youth orchestras. For a prime example of how such ensembles can benefit students - and how accomplished the results can be - don't miss the finale to the Greater Baltimore Youth Orchestra Association's 27th season.

Maestro Jason Love's penchant for the contemporary musical idiom means that his Columbia Orchestra, Howard County's premier ensemble for instrumental music, spends a fair amount of time outside the standard symphonic repertoire. That, however, will not be the case Saturday evening when the Columbians take the Rouse Theatre stage for a program of favorites taken straight from the heart of the classical canon. There is no better-loved overture anywhere than the instrumental prelude to Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, a story of love and forgiveness triumphant amid the fledgling republicanism of late 18th-century Europe.