Charles Dutoit

Big-boned, ambitious works are being presented this weekend, including Mozart's The Magic Flute, which will be performed in English at the Shubert Theater beginning tomorrow. Today at the Academy of Music, Charles Dutoit will conduct the Eugene Ormandy Memorial Concert, whose hefty fare consists of Rachmaninoff's "The Rock," Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15 and the Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, with violinist Pinchas Zukerman. "The Magic Flute" will be performed in English by the Pennsylvania Opera Theater at the Shubert Theater, 250 S. Broad St., at 8 tomorrow and Nov. 15 and at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Few players of any age show the level of comfort onstage that 14-year-old Sarah Chang displays with her fiddle, as the teenager proved again Friday night during a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The Henri Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto No. 5 in A minor was the first orchestra solo Chang performed at the Mann Music Center, attending to its spirals of melody with an ease that belies its difficulties. It is a funny kettle of fish, this Vieuxtemps - music whose flowing elegance seems not merely a century removed from us, but even a galaxy.

Charles Dutoit, who designs the programs for the Philadelphia Orchestra's summer seasons, threads his way between the comfortable and the challenging. In the program Tuesday, his choices exemplified that formula almost to the utmost. He began with everybody's graduation march, Pomp and Circumstance, and ended with another kind of rite - Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. The distance between those two is scarcely bridgeable, but Dutoit placed the Beethoven Violin Concerto in the middle, giving his audience something to ponder while drawing on the orchestra's recent Beethoven celebration.

The Chairman Dances has been a staple of the orchestral repertoire for nearly a decade, but it didn't make it to the Philadelphia Orchestra's subscription concerts until Thursday night. (It was played once before by the orchestra, in 1989, at the Mann Music Center). Charles Dutoit placed John Adams' bouncy work in the overture spot of the program, which he will repeat on Tuesday. The Chairman Dances is as viable for this orchestra as it is for an orchestra that plays contemporary music more frequently, but orchestras do have specialties; certain pieces fit some groups better than others.

Mann music director Charles Dutoit will arrive at Fairmount Park Monday for the first of a series of concerts he will conduct here with especially promising programs and guests, including soprano Kathleen Battle, whose lyric elegance usually leaves audiences in a fine mood. Battle sings Mozart on Monday. Then, Wednesday and Thursday, Philadelphians can make the acquaintance of the Montreal Symphony Chorus. The chorus has never appeared at this summer space but which made a strong impression during its performance of the Verdi Requiem last summer at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center with Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Charles Dutoit, artistic director of the Philadelphia Orchestra's summer series at the Mann Music Center, has a way of working against conventional belief and stereotype. Conventional wisdom says the Swiss-born conductor is best in the French repertoire. A wealth of recordings made with his Montreal Symphony support that view. But in his two weeks with the orchestra at the Mann, he will have conducted only one snippet of French music, a five-minute song by Alfred Bachelet, in his first concert.

That two of the works on the Philadelphia Orchestra program this weekend are local premieres shows how occasional are the ensemble's forays into French repertoire. Charles Dutoit programmed a whole evening of local rarities - Debussy's La Damoiselle elue, Messiaen's Trois Petites Liturgies de la Presence Divine and Roussel's Bacchus et Ariane suites. The Messiaen and the first of the Roussel Suites have never before been played here. Messiaen's work was moved to the top of the program, which made little sense, for the sounds, instrumentation and illuminated ecstasies of Messiaen's writing could be traced directly to Debussy.

Charles Dutoit is leading the Philadelphia Orchestra in a program of contrasts this weekend at the Academy of Music. Wagner's Prelude to Lohengrin began the opening evening on Thursday, casting a spell of quiet tension that absorbed the audience. It was a tautly controlled performance in which Dutoit shaped dynamics and tempi, moving into the music's swollen climaxes with mysticism. The only thing marring this fine display was that some of the instrumental sections, particularly the strings, missed the unanimity and precision that would have brought even greater beauty to the proceedings.

Two conductors will lead the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Music Center this week: Leonard Slatkin of the St. Louis Symphony tonight and Thursday, and old friend Charles Dutoit from the Montreal Symphony on Friday. TONIGHT American cellist Lynn Harrell, the featured soloist, will play the Schumann cello concerto. The program also features the sizzling Beethoven Leonore Overture No. 3 and Shostakovich's blazing Fifth Symphony. Recommended recordings: Schumann: DuPre/Barbirolli (not on CD)

The title of Henri Dutilleux's Tout un monde lointain . . . signals its poetic impulse (Baudelaire) but does not tell you it is a cello concerto. Mstivslav Rostropovich commissioned it, and gave its premiere performance in 1970; he has also recorded it. Otherwise, the concerto has not enjoyed the recognition of a few of this master's orchestral works. Lynn Harrell gives its Philadelphia premiere this afternoon, performing with Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra. "Dutilleux was intoxicated with the poetry of Baudelaire," said Harrell, adding that the poet believed the cello an ideal bridge between the music of words and the music of sound.