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.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has plunged directly from its demanding regular concert season into its annual Summer MusicFest with hardly a breath in between. Wednesday's opener at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall found the players none the worse for wear, and festival artistic director Mario Venzago very much in the mood to make engaging music. Typically, festivals begin on a rousing note. The Swiss-born Venzago took delight in telling the audience - after first offering his now-traditional apology for his English - that this festival was beginning with a "piano."

It's Wednesday, 'round about midnight. The New Haven Club, an intimate, 1950s-aura establishment innocuously tucked into a strip shopping center on the east side of town, is gently throbbing to the cool, tight sounds of the Dennis Fisher Band. A cluster of patrons -- a mix of races and ages -- sits at the bar, behind the combo. Another cluster is gathered at tables a few feet in front of the musicians, hanging on every note. A slender man in his early 60s, wearing a coat and tie (but somehow not looking like a businessman)

NEW YORK - Yuri Temirkanov has certainly looked pleased before at the end of a concert with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, but something about his smile Thursday evening in Carnegie Hall, something in the eyes, suggested a new level of satisfaction with his musicians. The reasons were easy to hear. When he led the BSO last week at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in the same Prokofiev/Grieg/Dvorak program, there was plenty of warmth and vitality in the playing. But this repeat - the most important stop on the orchestra's East Coast tour that wraps up tomorrow in Hartford, Conn.

If there's anyone left in this town who doesn't understand why so much fuss has been made about Yuri Temirkanov, even half of this Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program will explain it. Actually, there's only half a program left to hear - this morning's "Casual Concert" includes just the Symphony No. 2 by Sibelius. But that's more than enough to reveal how much musical insight Temirkanov has to offer, and how powerfully the orchestra can respond to him. On Thursday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, when Sibelius was preceded by his Violin Concerto, the revelations started literally with the first measures.

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.

A year ago today, Yuri Temirkanov gave his first concert as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. This week, the wisdom of that appointment couldn't have been more clear. On Thursday evening at Meyerhoff Hall, the Temirkanov touch came through magically right at the delicate start of Weber's "Oberon" Overture, with superb pacing and shading to create a suspenseful, woodsy atmosphere. The responsiveness of the musicians throughout the overture spoke volumes about the way they have gotten firmly into the Temirkanov groove, which involves molding phrases with spontaneity, freedom and joy. He makes the music come from deep inside.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is serving up a filling meat-and-potatoes meal this week - two repertoire staples by Beethoven and Brahms. Although a little spice on the menu would be nice (both pieces are even in the same key, D major), there's nothing stale in the presentation. The first performance on Thursday evening at Meyerhoff Hall found Yuri Temirkanov delivering his distinctive brand of rapt music-making - no note taken for granted, a deeply expressive character throughout. Where other conductors might be inclined to differentiate between the two composers on the program, Temirkanov treated them as basically cut from the same, rich, romantic cloth.

No laughing, please. Like the pop quiz, algebra and climbing the rope in gym class, the school photograph is one of those predictable obstacles to a happy childhood. Just as leaves begin to change colors, many a child's cheek turns scarlet when the photographer shows up at school. Should I smile? Show teeth? Look serious? Comb my hair? Open my eyes? Lose my glasses? Hide that blemish? Some of Baltimore's most well-known celebrities were asked (well, persuaded, begged, threatened) to dig through their attics and produce a school photo.

Mstislav Rostropovich breezed through town over the weekend in what is for him a typically whirlwind fashion. This was the if-it's-Saturday-it-must-be-Baltimore leg of a concert schedule that will have him in a dozen countries and two hemispheres before December. It's a schedule the 73-year-old Russian-born cellist seems downright proud of, pulling a copy of his itinerary from his suit pocket after settling into a couch in the cozy alcove of a hotel lobby. From Baltimore, it's off to Japan and China ("It's my first visit - I was so against communism that I wouldn't go there before, but I think China has changed very much")