Yuri Temirkanov

BSO music director Yuri Temirkanov has been asked to conduct a concert by Russian president Vladimir Putin for visiting French President Jacques Chirac next Thursday at the Noblemen's Assembly (the home of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic) in St. Petersburg. As Chief Conductor and Music Director state-supported and owned Philharmonic, Temirkanov had frequent dealings with the KGB, the Soviet secret police. Putin, from St. Petersburg, was one-time top KGB official and has known Temirkanov for years.

Some classical music artists, it seems, are available for a limited number of cancellations each year. That's a rap that, for awhile, seemed applicable to Yuri Temirkanov, the inspired Russian conductor who served as Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director from 2000 to 2006. He canceled several weeks with the BSO during his final season and several more, as music director emeritus, in 2007 and 2009. He likewise canceled engagements with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and others during those years.

THE BALTIMORE Symphony Orchestra, in its search for a successor to David Zinman, has landed a big one -- Yuri Temirkanov, considered one of the world's leading conductors.Now director of Russia's finest orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and principal guest conductor of London's Royal Philharmonic, Mr. Temirkanov has guest-conducted everywhere important and recorded profusely.It is a tribute to Mr. Zinman (who raised the symphony's excellence and eminence in 13 years as music director)

I kind of grew up with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra," says Yo-Yo Ma, the exceedingly gifted and adventurous cellist who will be the featured artist in the BSO's season-launching gala Saturday. "So I'm very excited about doing the opening concert." Ma, chatting by phone from his summer home in the Berkshires, recalls first performing with the orchestra in its pre-Meyerhoff Symphony Hall days at the Lyric Opera House with then-music director Sergiu Comissiona. "He was an incredibly kind man, very paternal to me," the cellist says.

The verdict is in. Yuri Temirkanov whacked it out of the park last Thursday -- and out of the county last night. Out-of-town critics, this one included, agreed wholeheartedly with the Baltimoreans who gave the Russian conductor a 12-minute standing ovation at the end of his inaugural concert as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony brought out the best in leader and players alike. Still, one concert does not a honeymoon make, and Temirkanov had something to prove.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - "Unbelievable!" That was probably the word repeated most often, at least by the many English-speaking guests, during Yuri Temirkanov's New Year's Ball at the Yusupov Palace. The extravagant czarist-style party has become the signature social event of the annual International Winter Festival Arts Square, founded and directed by Temirkanov, the veteran conductor who leads the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Temirkanov owns a condominium in Baltimore, but his home will always be the city founded on an unlikely stretch of swampy land by Peter the Great.

The name is Yuri Temirkanov. Tem-ir-KOHN-off. For the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, that name resonates with the excitement and high hopes of a new musical era -- one that starts Thursday when the 61-year-old conductor steps onto the podium and leads the orchestra in concert for the first time as its artistic director. Temirkanov, the 11th person to fill the position in the orchestra's 83-year history, begins his tenure with the BSO looking to him to improve it artistically and to enhance its reputation in the United States and abroad.

In a case of genuine tragedy, or, at the very least, extreme irony, Mozart apparently stopped composing a few measures into a section of the ancient Requiem Mass for the Dead called the "Lacrimosa." It's about the day of tears and mourning when the guilty shall be judged. The way Mozart began that music -- an arching, aching melodic line and a steady, somber beat, like the muffled march of a cortege -- has long haunted listeners. The image of this supreme genius dying at 35, unable to finish that Requiem, sensing within himself the deadly tread of the "Lacrimosa," is a difficult one to shake.

The last time Yuri Temirkanov conducted the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was back in December - in Germany, where the ensemble's European tour ended. The last time he stood on a podium in Meyerhoff Symphony Hall was less than two weeks ago - leading the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Given the combination of his prolonged absence and that recent triumphant appearance with his other orchestra, Temirkanov's return to the BSO for concerts this weekend cannot help but generate extra interest.

BERLIN - The shout of "Wunderbar!" coming from the balcony of the Berlin Philharmonie after the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's encore last night said it all. There was, indeed, something wonderful about the concert. The musicians can head on to Vienna today for an equally high-profile appearance feeling confident, even proud. They played the heck out of Beethoven in Berlin. Backstage afterward, music director Yuri Temirkanov looked more pleased than he has at any time during the tour.

Yuri Temirkanov threw a dinner party for about 100 of his closest friends Tuesday night -- the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and some of its administrative staff, past and present. It was Temirkanov's parting gift to an ensemble he has led with remarkable distinction since 2000. BSO Yuri Temirkanov leads the orchestra for the last times as music director at 8 p.m. today and tomorrow and 3 p.m. Sunday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St.; 8 p.m. Saturday at the Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda.

A music director and orchestra at the top of their game. A 23-year-old violinist in a stunning local debut. Call it one of the hottest nights at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in recent times. It would have been satisfying enough to have Yuri Temirkanov back - finally - with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night after a seven-month absence. With only two more weeks left in his tenure as music director, each performance automatically has extra significance. If you go BSO, with conductor Yuri Temirkanov, performs works by Weber and Beethoven at 11 a.m. today at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. Julia Fischer will be the soloist for Beethoven's Violin Concerto.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra got reacquainted with its music director yesterday morning when Yuri Temirkanov, whose most recent appearance with the ensemble was seven months ago on tour in Austria, finally returned. Applause, by hand and foot, greeted the Russian conductor as he stepped onstage and headed for the podium to begin rehearsal for this week's concerts. Temirkanov's Home Stretch The BSO plays works by Weber, Beethoven and Shostakovich at 8 p.m. tomorrow at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. For more performances, call 410-783-8000 or visit baltimoresymphony.

Yuri Temirkanov has canceled the first two of four weeks of concerts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra next month. Now in his final season as BSO music director, the Russian conductor last appeared with the orchestra in October. Temirkanov canceled several concerts during the past few years due to illness. This cancellation is due to the unexpected death last week in St. Petersburg of a friend, composer Andrei Petrov, best known for writing the scores to more than 70 Russian films.

TURIN, ITALY -- He's been dead for 68 years, but George Gershwin may never have been a livelier presence than now in a place where he craved acceptance -- the concert hall. In fact, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is currently touring Europe with a program that features an all-Gershwin first half: An American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue. By request. In fact, six out of seven requests. The BSO has already played it twice in Spain and last night in Turin to hearty ovations. It will play the program again tonight in Parma, Italy, tomorrow in Slovenia and Saturday in Vienna to close the tour.

Yuri Temirkanov may not have clocked the most on-the-job-site hours of any music director in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's history, but he has certainly put his time with the orchestra to great use. His relatively brief tenure (shortened by occasional concert-canceling illnesses) has been characterized by consistent upgrading of the ensemble's technical, artistic and, some would say, even spiritual quality. The Temirkanov style, which emphasizes tonal warmth and uninhibited expressiveness, seemed more savory than ever Thursday night at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, where the conductor launched his seventh and final season at the BSO helm.

Celebration is the word that best describes the upcoming music season.For starters, the 1999-2000 season marks the beginning of Yuri Temirkanov's first season as the new music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.Oops. Make that the great Russian conductor's first half-season. Temirkanov doesn't make his official debut as the BSO's new music director until January 20 and 21, when he leads the orchestra in Mahler's Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection"). If that first program suggests a rebirth of the orchestra, subsequent programs suggest ways in which Temirkanov will lead it in new directions: fresh repertory (such as Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13 -- "Babi Yar" -- the greatest work to come out of the Holocaust, June 22-24)

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Yuri Temirkanov comes to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra musically nourished and inspired by St. Petersburg, a tortured soul of a city built upon bones, forever swathed in mysterious fog, a place of poets and revolutionary passion.He came to this imperial city as a child, sent from the wild Caucasus, where he was born an ethnic Kabardian. His homeland was a mythic place, where the Greeks sought the Golden Fleece and Prometheus was chained to the mountains.Little wonder, then, that music-lovers and musicians reach for the word "emotion" in describing what happens when Yuri Temirkanov -- who was anointed less than two weeks ago as the next music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra -- stands before an orchestra and raises his hands.

The last time the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra sought a new music director, the process took about a year and ended with a choice - eminent Russian conductor Yuri Temirkanov - that had widespread approval from the musicians, the administration and the board of directors. This morning, the BSO board meets to decide whether to appoint Marin Alsop as Temirkanov's successor, knowing that an overwhelming majority of the musicians - about 90 percent, according to a statement released by the players committee Sunday - want the search process to continue for a few more months.