FOUR CHOREOGRAPHERS triumphed over 100 entries in the contest sponsored by Boston Ballet to choreograph to music of Tchaikovsky, thus celebrating his 100th birthday. They are Daniel Pelzig, $3,000 for "Cantabile"; Lucinda Hughey, $2,000 for Arensky's "Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky"; Stephen Baynes ($1,000) for "Rococo Variations," and the Boston-based duo Amy Spencer and Richard Colton ($1,000) "Concert Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra."
In 1988, B.B.'s artistic director Bruce Marks, formerly of Ballet West, instituted the competition. "Everyone in the ballet field is talking about a dearth of chor-eo-graphical talent, and yet no one is either able or willing to take a chance on new people," Marks said. "This is one way of finding out where they are and giving them a chance."- ATLANTA SYMPHONY'S 50th season, 1994-95, will incorporate two commissions funded by the Cultural Olympiad of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. They are a premiere by minimalist American composer Michael Torke on the opening night (Sept. 8), and on the final concert in May, a work by African-American composer Anthony Davis.
- THE ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY now recognizes what Utah Symphony has long understood: the audience-building power of music education in the public schools - which has all but disappeared in the United States. Accordingly, the St. Louis Symphony Society, which manages the orchestra, has agreed to merge with the St. Louis Conservatory and School for the Arts, in a joint venture called the the St. Louis Symphony Community Music School.
The school has 3,000 students from preschoolers to adults. Its programs include instrumental instruction of all sorts, four youth orchestras, a concert series in its own hall and community outreach projects.
- ELAINE PADMORE is moving on after 13 years as director of the Wexford Festival Opera in Ireland. She is now head of the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen.
The 42-year-old festival offers 18 days of novelty to opera buffs worldwide, with a three-piece program yearly, along with operatic recitals and concerts. Last fall saw performances of "Cherevichki" (1874) by Tchaikovsky, "Zampa" (1831) by Herold, and "The Barber of Seville," (1782) by Paisiello, a setting of the Beaumarchais play popular for 60 years until eclipsed by Rossini's 1816 version.
Productions are staged in a 560-seat theater, with young, adventurous casts who come for the prestige of an engagement there.
- PAUL ROBESON JR. is family archivist and a son dedicated to preserving his father's place in history. He's proud that Paul Robeson Sr. was an internationally acclaimed singer-actor and black radical who crusaded for human rights long before there was a civil rights movement.
After a lifetime as a translator of Russian, Robeson is embarking on a new career with his first book, "Paul Robeson Jr. Speaks to America," published by Rutgers University Press. Two other books are now in progress, one about the Gorbachev revolution in the Soviet Union, the other about his father, who died in 1976.
The son lauds his father as a "genuine living hero, as distinct from a role model. . . . He established the Negro spiritual as an art form on the concert stage both here and in Europe. He was an extraordinary and dominant presence in the American theater, one of the charter members inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame."