GUTIERREZ--A RARE SUMMER APPEARANCE

Imagine yourself seated at a Steinway grand piano, center stage at Hollywood Bowl. A crowd of some 10,000 becomes moderately hushed in anticipation of the downbeat. You signal the conductor that you are ready. He turns to the orchestra.

Nervous? Who wouldn’t be?

Horacio Gutierrez would. And, he says, he probably will be when he joins Michael Tilson Thomas and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for a performance of Chopin’s Second Concerto on Thursday at the Bowl.

“Sure, I get nervous,” he admits during a telephone conversation from his New York home. “But it’s a good tension. It’s not, ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing.’ I would say it’s a feeling of wanting to do your very best. Any performer has to be keyed up before going onstage. Otherwise, where’s the excitement?”

Still, there must be a few butterflies, playing before so large a crowd and in the unpredictable environment of Cahuenga Pass, particularly after an absence of five years. How does Gutierrez work past that? “You have to think you’re indoors,” he replies. “It takes time and experience to forget you’re outside. But I am still mindful of the audience. That is very important to me.

“In a concert hall, you see faces out of the corner of your eye, you feel surrounded by the audience. That’s why I was so glad they took out the reflecting pool at the Bowl and added more boxes right up to the edge of the stage. I do realize there are not the same standards of listening at an outdoor concert. All the same, I certainly don’t view my Bowl date as just another evening at the piano.”

While many musicians spend their summers traveling from one summer festival to another, the 36-year-old Cuban-born pianist normally does quite the opposite (with exceptions, such as his Philharmonic engagement this week, of course). “For me, summertime is a time for rest, for working up new repertory.” And the new work on the music stand this year? Gutierrez gives an embarrassed little laugh. “I’m going to learn (Beethoven’s) ‘Emperor’ Concerto. Isn’t it funny how everyone assumes you know a famous piece like that? I’m ashamed to say it, but I’ve never played it.”

ALSO AT THE BOWL: Michael Tilson Thomas shares the podium this week with Erich Kunzel. On Tuesday, Tilson Thomas will conduct the Philharmonic in a program of Russian music, with principal cellist Ronald Leonard as soloist in Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1. Also scheduled: a suite from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Mlada” and Stravinsky’s “Sacre du Printemps.” The Thursday agenda is completed by Brahms’ “Tragic” Overture and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Friday and Saturday evenings will be devoted to the annual fireworks-accented “Great American Concert.” Kunzel will lead works by Sousa, Bock, Kern, Hamlisch, etc., with baritone Robert Merrill as soloist. The novelty item--we certainly don’t consider fireworks a novelty, do we?--is a suite arranged for musical saw and orchestra. The soloist is David Weiss who, when not wiggling his favorite Stanley Handyman, is the orchestra’s principal oboist.

MONEY AND THE ARTS: A total of nearly $110,000 was recently awarded to 23 county arts organizations by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the newly formed National/State/County Partnership. The money, administered by the County Music and Performing Arts Commission, comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council and the County Board of Supervisors.

Among the recipients are Long Beach Grand Opera, Los Angeles Area Dance Alliance and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions ($10,000 each); Jazz Tap Ensemble ($7,500) and the Da Camera Society ($5,000).

SEASONS YET TO COME: Some moviegoers enjoy previews of coming attractions as much as the main feature--if not more. For those so inclined, here is the first of several reports on fall activities among local concert presenters:

At Ambassador Auditorium, the “Great Performers” series offers Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam (Sept. 26), violinist Nathan Milstein (Nov. 10), the Juilliard String Quartet (Jan. 25), Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (March 6), guitarist John Williams (April 5) and the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Riccardo Muti (June 2).

The “Guitar” series lists Julian Bream (Nov. 2), the Romeros (Dec. 4), Christopher Parkening (Jan. 19), Andres Segovia (March 13) and Williams (April 6). Williams’ two recitals, by the way, mark his first local appearances in more than a decade.

The “Stars of Opera” series lists recitals by Elly Ameling (Oct. 29), Jose Carreras (Dec. 8), Kathleen Battle (Feb. 9), Marilyn Horne (Feb. 23), Bulgarian soprano Ghena Dimitrova in her West Coast debut (March 16) and Lucia Popp (May 1).

Other series at Ambassador include “Great Orchestras of the World” (separate concerts by the three ensembles in the Great Performers series), “Piano,” “String Virtuosi,” “Early Music Festival,” etc.

PEOPLE: Bella Lewitzky and her locally-based 12-member dance company are scheduled to return tonight from an East Asia-New Zealand tour that included concerts in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Auckland. The tour was sponsored by the Arts America Program of the United States Information Agency.

David Commanday, former music director of the Boston Ballet (and son of Robert Commanday, long-time chief music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle), has been named assistant conductor of the San Diego Symphony, effective with the start of the 1985-86 season.

Michael Carson has been named director of the opera workshop at Cal State Long Beach. Carson is currently assistant music director of the Virginia Opera Assn., which presented the premiere of Thea Musgrave’s “Harriet, The Woman Called Moses” in March. Carson has worked as an assistant conductor on three Los Angeles Opera Theater productions: “Tosca,” “Elixir of Love” and “Anna Karenina.”

FOR THE RECORD: On June 23 the incorrect cast was listed for the Long Beach Grand Opera production of “Don Carlo,” scheduled for Feb. 13 and 15. Principal female roles will be sung by Kathryn Bouleyn (Elisabetta) and Katherine Ciesinski (Eboli).