ECLECTICISM APPARENT IN ESTONIAN CONDUCTOR

The Republic of Estonia sits on the northwest border of the Soviet Union, across the gulf from Finland and a short train ride from Leningrad. The major cities of Poland, Austria and Germany are also within reach. It is a place where access to the cultures of both East and West was easy in years past.

Native son Neeme Jarvi (pronounced NEE-may YAR-vee) recalls the musical cross-pollination once so common. “You know the opening tune in Brahms’ ‘Academic Festival’ Overture?” he asks, following with a quick hum-through. “That’s an Estonian folk song.”

“Yes,” the 47-year-old conductor muses during a phone conversation from his New Jersey home, “it was a good musical life there.”

Was.

The Soviet satellite is now “closed to the outside world,” says Jarvi, who makes his local debut leading the Philharmonic at the Music Center for two weeks beginning Thursday. Four years ago, “after Afghanistan and the Moscow Olympics boycott, when things got worse,” Jarvi and his family sought a home in America, where he had toured in the mid-’70s with both Leningrad orchestras.

“The decision to leave was easy,” he notes, “but it was hard to accomplish.” Relatively hard, as it turns out. He waited two months for the emigration papers to be approved. “Now, of course, it would be impossible.”

The eclecticism of his musical upbringing in Estonia has been hard to shake off. Witness his first Philharmonic program: the “Excelsior!” Overture of Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (with Radu Lupu as soloist) and the first of two installments of Dvorak’s complete Slavonic Dances.

Through his current position as principal conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony in Sweden (he also serves as music director of the Scottish National Orchestra), Jarvi discovered the music of Stenhammer. “His music is very Brahmsian,” the conductor comments. “He is thought of very highly in Sweden.”

Another bit of unusual programming is the traversal of the Slavonic Dances, a first for the Philharmonic. “It can become boring for a conductor or an orchestra to always play the same stuff--and boring for an audience, too,” Jarvi states. “I like to do music seldom heard.”

Jarvi has a dream of conducting works by Estonian composers--music decidedly “seldom heard.”

“There is a wonderful composer, Edward Tubin who, like me, ended up in Sweden. He died two years ago, but he wrote 10 symphonies, some of which I hope to record some day. Arvo Part is another fine composer.”

Though his passion for Estonian culture continues, Jarvi claims no desire to return. “I am happy here (in the United States). Besides, there are many Estonian communities in this country. Everywhere I go I feel like I’m home.”

A CHOICE OF BEETHOVENS: Isaac Stern played it recently at a Philharmonic pension fund concert. Now, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto appears once more--twice more, in fact. And in the same evening. Tonight at the Pavilion of the Music Center, Pinchas Zukerman traverses Opus 61 with Mehli Mehta and the American Youth Symphony at the orchestra’s annual benefit concert. Meanwhile, in Pasadena, Shlomo Mintz will play same at a concert by the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, led by Riccardo Chailly. Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 completes the latter agenda, works by Stravinsky and Shostakovich the former.

PEOPLE: Leon Fleisher has been named artistic director of the Tanglewood Music Center, succeeding Gunther Schuller. The pianist-conductor’s tenure begins officially in 1986.

David Cerone will succeed Grant Johannesen as president of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Cerone has served for 10 years at the institute, heading the string division.

Pianist Charlotte Behrendt, 16, and violinist Joan Kwuon, 15, both of Los Angeles, are among the 35 musicians chosen nationwide as finalists in the Seventeen Magazine-General Motors National Concerto Competition, to be held at Oberlin College in Ohio later this month.

AROUND TOWN: Mezzo-soprano Alexandra Hamilton and bass-baritone William Warfield will join conductor Leroy Hurteand the Inglewood Philharmonic in a concert devoted to Afro-American History, on Tuesday at 8 p.m. in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Program includes the West Coast premiere of Schwantner’s “New Morning for the World” and works by Calvin Taylor, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Earl Robinson and Dvorak.

Violinist Henryk Szeryng will appear in dual roles as conductor and soloist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in an all-Bach program in Bridges Hall of Music in Claremont at 8 p.m. Thursday, East County Performing Arts Center in El Cajon at 8 p.m. Friday, Ambassador Auditorium at 8:30 p.m. Saturday and the Embassy Theatre downtown at 7 p.m. Sunday.

The Alban Berg Quartet will perform on the Coleman Chamber Concert Series at Beckman Auditorium, Caltech, on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. The program lists quartets by Mozart (K. 465), Ravel and Beethoven (Op. 59, No. 3).