DA CAMERA SERIES PUTS FOCUS ON CONCERT SITES

Impresario MaryAnn Bonino has long since stopped trying to coordinate the dates of her Chamber Music in Historic Sites concerts with those of other chamber-music presenters.

“There are just too many (dates) to worry about,” Bonino says. Acknowledging that out of 27 scheduled chamber-music presentations announced for 1985-86, two conflict directly with Coleman Concerts events, Bonino adds, “Besides, we’re not really competing for the same audience.”

It is true that, even though high musical standards prevail on the two separate concert series presented by Bonino under the aegis of the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College, the architectural focus of the series makes it unique.

Consider some of the 18 locales impresario Bonino has chosen for this expanded season:

--The 3-year-old St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Pacific Palisades, which Bonino describes as “like the spirit of the Gothic with a contemporary design,” set to host the opening event of the season, Sept. 29, when the Boston-based American organist, Joseph Payne, presents the complete set of recently discovered Bach chorales for a first West Coast hearing.

--The legendary, neo-Mayan Ennis-Brown house created by Frank Lloyd Wright in the hills above Los Feliz Boulevard in 1924, setting for a concert by the Bartok String Quartet, Jan. 19.

--A meticulously restored Spanish colonial house, the Workman-Temple homestead (La Casa Nueva), built in City of Industry in 1923, and now a museum, its music room to hold performances of works by Falla, Schumann and Liszt, Feb. 23.

--A 99-year-old Victorian mansion, burnt to the ground in 1982, now completely restored, in the tiny community of Piru (11 miles west of CalArts), where pianist Lincoln Mayorga will revive music of MacDowell, Gottschalk and Mrs. H.H.A. Beach, among others, March 9.

--The Grand Salon of the Queen Mary (Cunard Steamship Co., 1936), where Musica da Camera Praga--members of the Prague Symphony--will perform, April 6.

In addition, Bonino promises return visits to sites already seen during the series’ first five seasons: Alverno High School in Sierra Madre; the Fine Arts Building at 7th and Figueroa; the Herald-Examiner building, also downtown, and the Crystal Ballroom at the Biltmore Hotel.

Of ensembles, the lineup remains eclectic: Pianist Robert Taub will preside over a 70th birthday party for composer Milton Babbitt at the Doumani House (Robert Graham, 1982) in Venice, May 11; the Boston Symphony Players, Chanticleer, Trio Sonnerie and the Folger Consort will also appear during the season.

Finally, Bonino is now booking, outside of her subscription season, a two-day chamber-music orgy on Catalina Island, June 7 and 8.

“There, we will present between five and 10 separate events, in different locales around the island,” the dauntless impresario promises.

Information: (213) 746-0450 or 747-9085.

AT THE BOWL: Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak are all Hollywood Bowl staples, but the conductor leading standard works by these composers at two Bowl concerts this week is a debutant. He is Claus Peter Flor, at 32 the music director and principal conductor of the (East) Berlin Symphony, and he will make his U.S. debut in Cahuenga Pass on Tuesday night with a Brahms concert at which Emanuel Ax will play both piano concertos by that composer.

Thursday night, Flor will conduct Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony on a program also offering the Cello Concerto of Dvorak, with Yo-Yo Ma as soloist.

PEOPLE: Lorin Maazel, current music consultant to the Pittsburgh Symphony (whose former music director, Andre Previn, begins his tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in October), has been named principal guest conductor and music adviser to the Pittsburgh ensemble for the 1986-87 and 1987-88 seasons.

James Feichtman, formerly executive director and general manager of the Long Beach Symphony, has been named orchestra manager of the Oakland Symphony, effective immediately.

Iain Hamilton, the British opera composer whose “Anna Karenina” was produced by Los Angeles Opera Theater two seasons ago, will see his latest opera, “Lancelot,” given world premiere performances Aug. 24-26 at the Arundel Festival in Great Britain. The performances will take place in the Tilting Yard of Arundel Castle. Leading the performances will be the American conductor Chris Nance, who led the U.S. premiere of “Anna Karenina” in Los Angeles in 1983.

Conductor Rhonda Kess has been appointed artistic administrator and assistant to the music director of the National Orchestral Assn. in New York City.

Naoko Yoshino, 17, a student of Susann McDonald at Indiana University in Bloomington, has won the ninth Israel International Harp Contest in Jerusalem. Yoshino, who is remembered in Los Angeles as a winner of a Young Musicians Foundation Debut award, will appear twice in Los Angeles during the coming season.