CLASSICAL MUSIC

Jenny Lin

Pianist Jenny Lin gave a recital at the Austrian Embassy Thursday night that was as thoughtfully conceived as it was beautifully executed. In a program devoted to piano music by Austrian composers, only the exquisite "Three Piano Pieces," composed by Schubert six months before his death, might be called familiar. Two works by Anton Webern from the mid-1920s, Kurt Schwertsik's "Five Nocturnes," Olga Neuwirth's "Marsyas" and two works, "Movements" and "Peras," by the highly acclaimed 34-year-old composer Johannes Maria Staud were also featured in deeply felt performances.

It is difficult to imagine a better spokesperson for this repertoire than Lin. Though a native of Taiwan, much of her childhood was spent in Vienna. Later, during her studies with the now-legendary Julian Martin at the Peabody Conservatory, she also earned a degree in German from Johns Hopkins. Her technically impressive piano playing, characterized by a wealth of tonal nuance, is both direct and communicative. These qualities were conspicuous in Staud's "Movements," a piece that explores the sonorous potential of the piano's middle, or "sostenuto," pedal. Elsewhere, her reading of Neuwirth's discursive "Marsyas," a score replete with unconventional chord textures, glissandos and tone clusters for fist, elbow and forearm, unfolded with subtlety and sensitive pacing.

If Lin may have missed an opportunity or two for intimate lyricism in her swift approach to the Schubert pieces, it was to emphasize their structural cohesion and emotional urgency to great effect. She introduced each group with relaxed, informative remarks that seemed the perfect complement to her graceful musicmaking. Dohnanyi's 1927 paraphrase on themes from Johann Strauss's "Die Fledermaus" concluded this extraordinarily satisfying evening.

-- Patrick Rucker

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Music Director Marin Alsop is proving herself to be a strong and consistent advocate of new composers and recent classical music. But, frustratingly, she is also proving to be uncertain and uneven in more traditional repertoire.

At the Music Center at Strathmore on Thursday night, Alsop led a splendid performance of Christopher Rouse's 1993 Flute Concerto, featuring BSO principal flutist Emily Skala in literally breathtaking form. The central third movement, a memorial to a toddler abducted and murdered by 10-year-olds, was especially affecting, its broad elegiac themes contrasting with spare and dissonant flute passages until serenity was eventually achieved. The concerto opens in quietude and subsides into it; here the BSO's soft playing was notable. The frenetic second and fourth movements, with Skala holding her own even against the timpani, showcased the soloist's fine control of breath and rhythm. Rouse, a Baltimore native and onetime BSO composer-in-residence, well deserved his bow with the performers at the end.

The rest of the program featured Beethoven and was not at this level. With the trumpet call sounding from the back of the hall, Alsop led a speedy "Leonore" Overture No. 3 that was fun to watch but sounded impatient and rushed. The first movement of Symphony No. 5 was simply ragged -- a rarity for this polished orchestra -- with uncertain tempo and wobbly entrances. The middle movements were quick, the Andante Con Moto being more moto than andante. But the finale, in which everyone cut loose, was brash and brassy and highly effective, if far from subtle.

The program will be repeated tonight at 8 and tomorrow at 3 p.m. at Meyerhoff Hall in Baltimore.

-- Mark J. Estren