West Coast premiere of Salonen composition, canceled at OCPAC, will happen Saturday at UCLA

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The West Coast premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s 2007 composition ‘Homunculus for String Quartet’ was supposed to have happened Wednesday night at Orange County Performing Arts Center on the program at a concert performed by the Guarneri String Quartet and the Johannes String Quartet. But a death in the family forced Johannes Quartet violist Choon-Jin Chang to pull out of the performance.

While another violist, Lesley Robertson of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, filled in for Chang for the rest of the program, the Salonen composition was canceled -- and Salonen told our music critic Mark Swed earlier this week that he did not expect that a replacement violist could learn the piece in time for Saturday’s planned reprise of the performance at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

But the performance will go on as planned at Royce: While replacement Robertson was not ready to play the Salonen composition on Wednesday, a UCLA spokeswoman said the can-do violist will perform the work at UCLA. ‘She’s practicing every minute,’ the spokeswoman said.

-- Diane Haithman