Respighi

Sunday at 2 p.m., WRTI-FM (90.1) broadcasts a Philadelphia Orchestra concert from November 2011. Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads an Italian-themed program: Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini , Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 , the overture to Verdi's La Forza del Destino , and Respighi's The Pines of Rome .

Koji Attwood's 10 minutes of great substance arrived like a bolt of genius Sunday afternoon in a program otherwise offering fluff. It was high-quality fluff, to be sure - Rossini, Respighi and Martucci. But when Attwood, the pianist who has been taken under the wing of Astral Artistic Services, played three Scarlatti keyboard sonatas, everything else on the program shrank in stature. The pieces themselves (K. 11 in C minor, K. 101 in A major and K. 27 in B minor) are marvels of virtuosity, a quality realized elegantly by Attwood.

Sometimes the best nights at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts are the ones requiring raincoats. The box office may not have been happy with the Thursday turnout, but at least you were with people who came to seriously hear the Philadelphia Orchestra. The restless, "kiddie matinee" atmosphere of Tuesday's opening (and I'm not referring to the presence of children) seemed far away. The Wednesday and Thursday night concerts were the orchestra's first outings with Mario Venzago, a Zurich-born conductor with an often-exciting, Italianate temperament and an ability to give familiar pieces a distinctive stamp.

The Temple University Symphony Orchestra no doubt left Lincoln Center Wednesday knowing its mission was thoroughly accomplished, having performed the symphonic equivalent of high-impact aerobics - and in a way that only hormone-driven twentysomethings can. Respighi's The Pines of Rome, with its 3-D, high-def orchestration and trios of trumpeters positioned in each side box, concluded the concert in a fashion that made you concerned for the construction...

The Philadelphia Orchestra, lately anxious and preoccupied with its future, took some time out Tuesday night to tend to its past. And what a glorious past it is. The spirits of Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy and Riccardo Muti were strongly recalled in a one-performance-only concert of favorites called "The Fabulous Philadelphians. " Even ghosts of two nearly forgotten music directors past were evoked - Fritz Scheel, its first leader, and Karl Pohlig, its second - in photographs projected on two video screens hanging near the Academy of Music stage.

WILMINGTON - The division between ancient and current music sometimes barely exists: Those involved with speculative resurrection of centuries-old sound need not work that much differently to bring new music into being. So nobody should be surprised that the small, Wilmington-based chamber-music group Mélomanie had no audible problems mixing ultra-polite Telemann with Variations on a Theme by Steely Dan by Mark Hagerty, performed Saturday at Grace United Methodist Church here (repeated Sunday at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill)

The Philadelphia Orchestra is playing encores. This might not seem like a big deal to listeners in New York or Toyko, where the orchestra is generous with such rewards, but it's not been the tradition on home turf. Last week, music director-designate Yannick Nézet-Séguin showed a promising sensitivity by capping Mozart's Requiem with the same composer's hushed Ave Verum Corpus , and Thursday night Gianandrea Noseda sent the audience home stoked by the sensuous glow of Sibelius' Waltz Triste . Encores are a lovely thanks to orchestra supporters being called on for help during a tough period in the institution's history, but choosing the right one is a balancing act, an art in itself.

One of the most revered members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, oboist Richard Woodhams, comes center stage to solo this weekend. Woodhams is considered one of the greatest masters, now or ever, on his instrument, and his influence on other members in the orchestra - and even in other ensembles - is legendary. He has chosen two pastoral works: the Concerto for Oboe and Strings by Ralph Vaughan Williams and the "Soliloquy" for oboe and orchestra by Elgar, orchestrated by Gordon Jacob.

Even at intermission Thursday night, the question of Roberto Abbado's potential ascendancy was bouncing around the marble lobby of the Academy of Music. Was the Milanese maestro a contender - still? - for successor to music director Wolfgang Sawallisch? After all, members of the search committee had not turned out to watch the dust settle on the Academy's chandelier. Abbado impressed plenty. But first things first. It's far too early to tell whether Abbado, 45, has a titular future with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Every conductor has a specialty, a signature piece in which composer and interpreter become one. Eugene Ormandy had his Sibelius Symphony No. 2 and Respighi tone poems. Riccardo Muti had his Verdi, Rossini and Scriabin. And when Wolfgang Sawallisch leaves the Philadelphia Orchestra someday, there are many of us who won't be able to hear a Strauss tone poem or opera without thinking of him. One of the pieces that Muti made his own during his tenure was Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, to which Sawallisch and the Philadelphians gave a new coat of paint Thursday night.

Sunday at 2 p.m., WRTI-FM (90.1) broadcasts a Philadelphia Orchestra concert from November 2011. Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads an Italian-themed program: Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini , Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 , the overture to Verdi's La Forza del Destino , and Respighi's The Pines of Rome .

WILMINGTON - The division between ancient and current music sometimes barely exists: Those involved with speculative resurrection of centuries-old sound need not work that much differently to bring new music into being. So nobody should be surprised that the small, Wilmington-based chamber-music group Mélomanie had no audible problems mixing ultra-polite Telemann with Variations on a Theme by Steely Dan by Mark Hagerty, performed Saturday at Grace United Methodist Church here (repeated Sunday at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill)

The opening of this week's Tanglewood Festival with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was available in radio broadcasts for those of us unable to get there. And though the audio-only aspect of radio is far from the experience of being there, microphones don't lie in live broadcasts. Charles Dutoit stepped in for the indisposed James Levine with a modified grab-bag program that included repertoire as far flung as Respighi's tone poem The Pines of Rome , and, more significantly, Act I of Bellini's Norma , starring Academy of Vocal Arts graduate Angela Meade.

The Philadelphia Orchestra is playing encores. This might not seem like a big deal to listeners in New York or Toyko, where the orchestra is generous with such rewards, but it's not been the tradition on home turf. Last week, music director-designate Yannick Nézet-Séguin showed a promising sensitivity by capping Mozart's Requiem with the same composer's hushed Ave Verum Corpus , and Thursday night Gianandrea Noseda sent the audience home stoked by the sensuous glow of Sibelius' Waltz Triste . Encores are a lovely thanks to orchestra supporters being called on for help during a tough period in the institution's history, but choosing the right one is a balancing act, an art in itself.

Turnover being what it is, it's funny to think that not many current members of the Philadelphia Orchestra were around for Riccardo Muti's Respighi tone poems. These colorful pieces are far in the rearview mirror - two and three decades past - but even now they resonate as events. (Of course, Muti was an event.) While Gianandrea Noseda's view of Respighi doesn't have much in common with that of his elder countryman, he was no less a convincing evangelist Friday afternoon. Where Muti turned the Philadelphia Orchestra into something incisive and terse, Noseda emphasized humanity.

WE HAVE AN idea for a "Jersey Shore" spin-off, but, unfortunately, the title "Cops" is already taken. Cast member Ronald "Ronnie" Ortiz-Magro was taken into custody in Seaside Heights around noon yesterday for outstanding warrants from two other Jersey communities. The warrants involve unpaid parking tickets. Police say the Bronx, N.Y., resident was released a short time later "after satisfying the conditions of the warrants. " Ronnie was also arrested in September by Seaside Heights officers after a brawl on the boardwalk.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Any fete for Charles Dutoit would necessarily involve a certain amount of frisson, and Thursday night, in capping the conductor's 21 summers leading the Philadelphia Orchestra's concerts here, it came in bubbly form. At a preconcert talk, there was champagne. For the audience at intermission, champagne. With musicians backstage after this last Dutoit concert as artistic chief of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center - real champagne. "The greatest conductor in the world," declared Marcia White, SPAC's president, as she brought Dutoit out for what she said was his 182d concert at this horse-racing resort town where the orchestra has spent part of every summer since 1966.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Any fete for Charles Dutoit would necessarily involve a certain amount of frisson, and Thursday night, in capping the conductor's 21 summers leading the Philadelphia Orchestra's concerts here, it came in bubbly form. At a preconcert talk, there was champagne. For the audience at intermission, champagne. With musicians backstage after this last Dutoit concert as artistic chief of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center - real champagne. "The greatest conductor in the world," declared Marcia White, SPAC's president, as she brought Dutoit out for what she said was his 182d concert at this horse-racing resort town where the orchestra has spent part of every summer since 1966.

Seldom do such sprawling operatic components fall together so well as in the Academy of Vocal Arts' presentation of Ottorino Respighi's 1934 opera, La Fiamma, which had a rare, gratifying airing Friday at the Kimmel Center. The opera is known more from recordings, not performances, and even then superficially brilliant renderings feel like preliminary investigations and leave you wondering how much of the piece you're not getting. The AVA's ever-electric music director, Christofer Macatsoris, hasn't presided over anything preliminary in the eight years I've heard him. With a cast of young professional singers that followed him into the molten core of La Fiamma with unusual consistency - in a concert performance with no theatrical matters distracting from the music-making - Friday's performance was a better encounter with Respighi's score than I had ever hoped for. Performed at this level, the opera carried itself with such strength of purpose that its neglect was puzzling.

Enjoy the music while you can. The economic downturn has had no immediate impact on classical-music programming, which is devised and funded at least a year in advance and is, for the moment, perfectly safe. It may even be more accessible these days: Tickets could be easier to come by, especially if many are left over from subscription sales. But the stock-market gyrations that began last fall will be felt come next fall. So here it is: the glory that is 21st-century Philadelphia - for however long it lasts.