Guinness

BERLIN - The music was finished. Many bows had been taken. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra had left the stage Thursday night, except for a few straggling double bassists. But listeners were still there and still clapping. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin obligingly scooted back onto the Berlin Philharmonie stage with characteristic energy, and was greeted with yet another approving roar. The orchestra had played not just well, but interestingly, with a spontaneity that sometimes teetered on the edge of chaos in ways that suited the music and were encouraged by the guest conductor.

Word arrived by mail Monday that Philadelphia did indeed set a new Soul Train Dance world record. Writer Sheila Simmons, the principal organizer, got a congratulatory letter Guinness World Records along with the official certificate, which declares: "The largest Soul Train Dance consisted of 291 participants and was achieved by the Philadelphia Soul Train Line Dancers in Philadelphia, Pa., USA, on 13 February 2012. " The previous record - which lingered, but not for long, on the Guinness website this morning - was set by 211 dancers in November 2011 at Berkeley High School in Berkeley, Calif.

No one will be more surprised to see Sir Alec Guinness in "Mute Witness" than Alec Guinness. The venerable British actor agreed to appear in the picture some eight years ago, when a brash young director named Anthony Waller cornered Guinness at a film festival and badgered him into agreeing to a cameo. Waller filmed Guinness's scenes (he appears alone) in Hamburg in 1985 and put the footage on the shelf until he could arrange financing for the rest of his movie, a tongue-in-cheek thriller about an American film crew trying to make a low-budget slasher movie in a Moscow studio where a real slasher operates.

L uca Sena, 62, of Society Hill, owns Penn's View Hotel and two restaurants, Ristorante Panorama and Revolution House, all in Old City. Born in Naples, Sena was 17 when he moved to Philly with his father in 1967. The rest of the family soon followed. The Sena family's first restaurant, La Famiglia, on Front Street, opened in 1976 and now is run by Luca's brother, Giuseppe. Q: Panorama opened in 1990 and you're still doing well. What's the secret to your longevity? A: I always kept an open mind, surrounded myself with younger people, having two sons [Carlo and Luca Jr.]

Age-appropriate repertoire is a nagging question for young conductors: Should they conduct nothing deeper than Carmina Burana until age 40? Yannick N?zet-S?guin, 34, shows no caution in this regard: He's a "ninth symphony" kind of guy, embracing late-period Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler with unexpected success. What of the flashier, youthful stuff that figures into everyday concerts? At his Lincoln Center tour stop with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra on Wednesday, he faced a program of potboiler Liszt and Richard Strauss as well as the Philadelphia Orchestra search committee in the audience, eager to hear what he's like in calling-card repertoire and with the near-world-class orchestra he has headed for almost two years.

This article was originally posted on Inquirer music critic Peter Dobrin's blog, Arts Watch. Find it at www.philly.com/artswatch . As mentioned by The Inquirer in January, incoming Philadelphia Orchestra music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will be recording with Deutsche Grammophon. The label officially announced the "long-term collaboration" Thursday. Nézet-Séguin is slated to make three DG recordings with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, of which he is music director, starting with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6, "Pathétique.

JULIUS VanGuine is now the only member of Kensington High's basketball team who attends classes in the original building. Because of that . . . Well, let's allow him to tell us. "Our crowds haven't been too great this year and I definitely didn't think many of our students would be coming to the game," he said. "But at lunch, they were selling tickets and lots of kids were buying them. They were saying, 'We'll be there! You'd better win!' "I was thinking, 'This is pretty cool.' It wasn't like I felt I had to put on a show, but I did want to give the fans what they wanted.

No one doubted that the Yannick era with the Philadelphia Orchestra had begun Thursday when the music director-designate led Mahler and Bach at Verizon Hall. The day before, Yannick Nézet-Séguin had expansively laid out plans for his first season, and had sought to assure the players in rehearsal that things were going to get better. In concert, the conductor, whose tenure begins in September, splashed large the range of styles he means to survey and laid out, in Bach, his fides as a performing musician.