MILESTONES

By ELIZABETH L. BLAND, JANICE M. HOROWITZ, NADYA LABI, LINA LOFARO, ALAIN L. SANDERS AND JOEL STEIN

RELEASED. PHAM DUC KHAM, 65, Vietnamese dissident who circulated the Freedom Forum; before completing his 12-year sentence; in Hanoi.

DIED. ALDO ROSSI, 66, sublime architect who reworked vernacular forms into designs of haunting beauty; after a car accident; in Milan, Italy. The Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena, Italy--a colonnaded arcade of chilling austerity--is one example of the poetic use of space that won him architecture's highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, in 1990.

DIED. SIR GEORG SOLTI, 84, fierce maestro who prodded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to the front of the world stage; in Antibes, France. During his conducting debut at the Budapest Opera, Solti's audience fled--not from his Mozart, but out of fear that Hitler, then in Vienna, was fast approaching. Never again. On the Chicago podium, he transfixed listeners, seemingly verging on levitation in his energetic efforts to draw tight phrasing and brilliant coloration from his musicians. His athleticism won the orchestra 23 Grammy Awards during his 22-year reign.

DIED. VIKTOR FRANKL, 92, inspirational Austrian psychiatrist who survived Nazism's concentration camps to write Man's Search for Meaning; in Vienna. Frankl's father, mother, brother and first wife were all killed in the camps, a fate he narrowly escaped--in part, he believed, by finding meaning in helping others face the ordeal.

DIED. SIR RUDOLPH BING, 95, witty, authoritarian impresario who called the tunes at the Metropolitan Opera for 22 years; after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease; in New York City. Bing broke new ground as general manager of the Met--moving the company to Lincoln Center, introducing its first black performers, and building it into a first-class opera house. His ear for singers was equally discriminating--though he never quite lived down firing Maria Callas in 1968.