Scheherazade

"Papa" Haydn is often called, rightfully and wrongly, the father of the symphony. The Los Angeles Philharmonic demonstrated the rightful part Thursday night with clear, crisp, clever and ever-delightful performances of Haydn's first and 100th efforts at the genre he didn't invent but unquestionably made feasible. The actual origins of the symphony are hard to pin down. A new recording by the Academy of Ancient Music in London titled "Birth of the Symphony" finds the roots of the modern symphony in the Death March from Handel's oratorio "Saul" - written in 1738, two decades before Haydn's First - and moseys through forgotten scores by Franz Xaver Richter and Johann Stamitz before arriving at Haydn.

"Papa" Haydn is often called, rightfully and wrongly, the father of the symphony. The Los Angeles Philharmonic demonstrated the rightful part Thursday night with clear, crisp, clever and ever-delightful performances of Haydn's first and 100th efforts at the genre he didn't invent but unquestionably made feasible. The actual origins of the symphony are hard to pin down. A new recording by the Academy of Ancient Music in London titled "Birth of the Symphony" finds the roots of the modern symphony in the Death March from Handel's oratorio "Saul" - written in 1738, two decades before Haydn's First - and moseys through forgotten scores by Franz Xaver Richter and Johann Stamitz before arriving at Haydn.

'Daddy, don't you confess!" she implored over the phone, the outburst of an impulsive teen. The jailers listening in quickly ended the conversation. But 15-year-old Scheherazade's rash words ultimately meant more to her imprisoned father than she could imagine. It was the first time in weeks she had spoken to her father, Saeed Laylaz, a prominent Iranian economist and liberal journalist jailed days after disputed elections last year. For nearly two months, his wife and two children had no idea where the 44-year-old had been taken or even whether he was still alive.

'Daddy, don't you confess!" she implored over the phone, the outburst of an impulsive teen. The jailers listening in quickly ended the conversation. But 15-year-old Scheherazade's rash words ultimately meant more to her imprisoned father than she could imagine. It was the first time in weeks she had spoken to her father, Saeed Laylaz, a prominent Iranian economist and liberal journalist jailed days after disputed elections last year. For nearly two months, his wife and two children had no idea where the 44-year-old had been taken or even whether he was still alive.

Kazuhito Yamashita, guitar. RCA Victor 7929-2-RC (compact disc). Like Yamashita's recordings of "Pictures at an Exhibition" and "Scheherazade," this recording is more stunt than esthetic experience, but what a stunt! He searches far and wide for timbrel variety to parallel the orchestral scoring, creating some novel effects along the way, and makes few concessions in tempo or texture. The results are astonishing and even exhilarating indulgences for guitar aficionados, frantic messes for admirers of the originals.

So Albert Mokhiber and Don Bustany of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee object to both the original lyrics of "Arabian Nights" and to Disney's amended version ("Disney Will Alter Song in 'Aladdin,' " July 10). The term barbaric , they feel, is, well, barbaric and not to be tolerated. I was under the impression that "Aladdin" was based, if ever so loosely, on the tales as related by Scheherazade during her "One-Thousand-and-One-Night" "trial run" as King Shahryar's bride.

A staple of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Hollywood Bowl repertory for many decades, Rimsky-Korsakov's familiar "Scheherazade" has often seemed a tired exercise in orchestral display and conductorial indifference. One's many memories of it do not contain epiphanies.

With its colorful subject matter, hum-along tunes and brassy, cymbal-crashing climaxes, Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" has become something of a pops concert staple. In other words, we don't respect it anymore. But Frances Steiner, who guest-conducted the Glendale Symphony Sunday night in the Alex Theatre, has a different view. She hears it as a finely crafted and often delicate piece, as elegant as a silk tapestry, as sparkling as an illuminated manuscript.

Extravagant claims are made about the sonic wonder of every advance in audio technology, such as compact discs. All it takes, however, is a brilliant performance of a blockbuster like "Le Sacre du Printemps" in a lively auditorium such as Segerstrom Hall to shatter any illusions of equality between the impact of live and reproduced music.

HERE'S a story for you: "A group of ten young people over the course of ten days" comes together "in a luxurious retreat from the horrors" of their chaotic society. They discuss "everyday concerns, and uneasiness about, on the one hand, money, and on the other hand, God." This narrative offers "celebrity named characters in several stories....

WE all have them, lurking in the forgotten recesses of our kitchens: old racks of even older spices. Unused herbs, overlooked seeds, bottles of colored dust, labels faded. But read Ana Sortun's debut cookbook, "Spice: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean," and those aromatic treasures will never again languish on your shelves.

By land and by sea, Jorge Mester and the Pasadena Symphony took the audience on fascinating journeys of the imagination Saturday at Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Peter Schickele's Symphony No. 1, "Songlines," was the journey over land, while Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" launched its series of stories on a great depiction of the sea. Composed in 1995, "Song- lines" is an often wondrous three-movement symphony of ambitious scope.

Sara Rosario Gonzalez is a 32-year-old restorer of rare books at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles who unexpectedly finds herself on the verge of a heartbreak, but as Yxta Maya Murray shows in her latest novel, "The Conquest," the human yearning to overcome loss can sometimes be the inspiration that leads to great art. When Sara's high school sweetheart, Marine Capt.

Attaching a "Hollywood Goes Orchestral" tag to Tuesday's concert by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra might be accurate, but it was also misleading. In a program in which Elmer Bernstein's engaging Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra--written for the evening's featured soloist, Christopher Parkening--had its Los Angeles premiere, and a suite from Alex North's "Cleopatra" score had its U.S. premiere, music-for-its-own sake was the thing.

Audio O'Sullivan Stew, Children's Book-of-the-Month Club. Cassette: $10 (book published by Putnam, $16). Children's Book World: (310) 559-2665; BMOC: (800) 348-7128; http://www.amazon.com/. In Scheherazade fashion, young Kate O'Sullivan saves her brothers Kelly and Fergus and her father, Seamus, by telling tall tales to a king in this colorfully performed theatrical audio version of the children's book by Hudson Talbott.

Elaine Conti awoke in her luxurious bed in her luxurious Beverly Hills mansion, pressed a button to open the electrically controlled drapes, and was confronted by the sight of a young man clad in a white T-shirt and dirty jeans [urinating] a perfect arc into her mosaic-tiled swimming pool."

A staple of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Hollywood Bowl repertory for many decades, Rimsky-Korsakov's familiar "Scheherazade" has often seemed a tired exercise in orchestral display and conductorial indifference. One's many memories of it do not contain epiphanies.

Elaine Conti awoke in her luxurious bed in her luxurious Beverly Hills mansion, pressed a button to open the electrically controlled drapes, and was confronted by the sight of a young man clad in a white T-shirt and dirty jeans [urinating] a perfect arc into her mosaic-tiled swimming pool."