Yuri Temirkanov

The last time the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was in the market for a new music director, almost 10 years ago, a search committee representing management, musicians and board members soon had a clear favorite to succeed David Zinman - Yuri Temirkanov. The symphony president and board chairman pursued him doggedly, almost around the globe, until he finally agreed to sign a contract. But the whole process was done internally and quietly, as is most orchestral business. Since September, when Temirkanov announced that he would step down at the end of the 2005-2006 season, the BSO has been searching again.

With a surge of soul-on-sleeve, enveloping romanticism - and, perhaps, an extra degree of passion and commitment - the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra opened its penultimate season with Yuri Temirkanov as music director last night. Word of the conductor's decision to end his tenure in two years could have reached few people in the audience at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, but everyone onstage had learned about it a couple of days ago. I suspect the weight of that news accounted for at least some of the compelling results.

COMING UP Antiques and Annapolis are together again in the Historic Annapolis Antiques show this weekend. The event runs tomorrow through Sunday at the E. Leslie Medford Armory. Wares include maps and prints, rugs, linens and laces, scientific instruments, porcelain and illustrated books. Tickets for the show, which runs 11 a.m.-6 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday, are $8 and can be purchased at the door. The Medford National Guard Armory is on Hudson Street in Annapolis.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - "How you spend New Year's Eve," goes a Russian saying, "is how you will spend the year." That may mean that Yuri Temirkanov is in for months of feeling lousy. The conductor has been ailing since Dec. 31, when he started coming down with a throat ailment just as he had to serve as host at his annual New Year's Eve Ball at the Yusupov Palace, the main social function of his International Winter Festival, Arts Square. (No wonder during the toast he led that night, he repeatedly emphasized that he hoped everyone would enjoy a "healthy" New Year.

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.

Yuri Temirkanov, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, will not be on the podium this week as scheduled "so that he may undergo a routine medical procedure," according to a statement released by orchestra management over the weekend. Temirkanov is expected to resume his BSO schedule next week, rehearsing and conducting a program devoted to Sergei Prokofiev's score for the classic Sergei Eisenstein film Alexander Nevsky, performed in synch with the film. Last week, Temirkanov completed a month-long tour with his other orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, which began in Asia and concluded in Berlin.

Way back in the 19th century and even a little ways into the 20th, the big thrill about each music season was the prospect of hearing something new. Orchestras and opera companies eagerly sought out the latest works by leading and emerging composers of the day. It was much the same with chamber ensembles, vocal and instrumental soloists. This considerable thirst for the new wasn't confined to performers and impresarios. Sure, audiences craved their Mozart and Beethoven, but they also fully expected to be hit in the ears with fresh sounds throughout the season, some of them pleasing, some (maybe even most of them)

So many people routinely compromise their principles, usually for money or social or political advantage, that it's always refreshing to learn about someone standing absolutely firm. Consider the case of Yuri Temirkanov vs. the Opera National de Lyon in France. When the Russian conductor isn't on duty as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra or St. Petersburg Philharmonic, he's making guest appearances. For one of his engagements this summer, he was to have conducted a production in Lyon of Tchaikovsky's great - some would say his greatest - opera, The Queen of Spades, based on a novel by Pushkin.

Fish out of water sometimes do very well for themselves. Haydn had a ball when he left Austria for temporary residence in England in the 1790s, even though he couldn't speak the language. He not only wrote some of his finest symphonies there, but apparently found a pleasing substitute for the disagreeable wife back home. Mendelssohn didn't like everything about his visit to Italy in 1830, but soon found himself caught up in the native spirit and, before returning to Germany, had more than enough vivid memories to fashion a sparkling musical souvenir.

Three murders, a couple of floggings and sexual assaults, a suicide and the most X-rated music -- yes, music -- in all of opera. Even some late-night cable TV shows pale next to Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the brilliant creation by Dmitri Shostakovich that incensed Josef Stalin and caused the composer to be labeled an "enemy of the people." The work, which will be performed for the first time by the Baltimore Opera Company as part of the Vivat! St. Petersburg festival, can still raise eyebrows and earlobes, but few operagoers these days end up siding with Stalin.