NEW ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR TO DEBUT

Don’t be fooled by David Commanday’s low-key manner. The new assistant conductor of the San Diego Symphony has a formidable intelligence. He speaks German and French fluently and does fine, thank you, in Italian, Spanish and Swedish “when I get stuck in a country for a while.”

Commanday honed his lingual skills in Europe after graduating cum laude from Harvard in 1976. Besides music and languages, he also studied personality psychology, which might prove handy for a young conductor. He received numerous fellowships and trained for four years at the Vienna Academy of Music, acquiring a taste for the German Romantic period, including the music of the Strausses--Josef, Johann Sr. and Jr., and Richard--Brahms and Weber, among others.

On Thursday, Commanday will make his debut here, a season earlier than expected. He was tapped to fill the conductorial bill when Hiroshi Wakasugi canceled his appearance. Commanday scrapped Mahler’s mighty Symphony No. 9 and substituted a program reflecting his love of the German Romantic period: Weber’s Overture to the opera “Der Freischuetz,” Richard Strauss’ tone poem “Tod und Verklaerung” (“Death and Transfiguration”) and Brahms’ rarely heard Serenade No. 1.

“It was an honest and straightforward solution to pick works close to my heart,” he said.

Commanday grew up in a musical household. His father, Robert, was a conductor at Berkeley and currently is the music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. Although this is his first appearance before a local audience, Commanday, who directed the Boston Ballet before coming to San Diego, has conducted the orchestra “a great deal in rehearsal” as music director David Atherton and other visiting maestros listened to the sound of the new Symphony Hall. As part of his job, Commanday will direct his first Young People’s Concerts on Feb. 12 and 26, including Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

PROVINCIAL ART: Gosh, but we do get up on our high horse when outsiders horn in on the San Diego art territory. For once, though, it’s the other way around--local artist Bill Dwyer is horning in on the Los Angeles art scene. I wonder what Los Angeles artists think about Dwyer being among six sculptors in the L.A. Institute of Creative Arts exhibit “Sculpture, Part I,” which opened Tuesday. Also included in the show is work by former San Diegan Bill Tunberg. Dwyer is represented by cool, minimalist grid work using chicken wire, and Tunberg by his whimsical surrealistic assemblages. The institute is at 2020 S. Robinson Blvd. in West Los Angeles. The exhibit runs through Feb. 15.

ART SPARKS: “Kicked a Building Lately?” “Architecture in the Niche of Time.” “Joust a Minute.” “Do You Know Where Your City Is?” “A City as Strong as its Greenest Link.” Those are the titles of a few of last year’s Spark Forums, developed by architects Spencer Lake and John Ziebarth and sponsored by the American Institute of Architects.

“Can Architects Bridge the Division between Politics and Art?” is the subject of the first forum of 1986. It will be at 8 p.m. Jan. 21 at Words & Music Bookstore in Hillcrest.

“Architects often view their works as great structures, while the urban environment calls for great relationships among buildings,” Lake said. That and other subjects germane to San Diego will be the subject of this Spark meeting. Lake’s plan is to develop a list of issues at this forum to be subjects for the remaining monthly forums. The public is invited. Members of professional, cultural and arts groups will speak.

ART AWARDS: Each year the National Society of Arts and Letters sponsors a competition to “encourage and assist young artists . . . in the creative and performing arts.” The winner of the national contest will receive an award of $5,000. The annual career awards rotate every five years among literature, drama, dance, art and music. This year’s competition is in art, specifically oil painting. Contestants must be U.S. citizens who will be between the ages of 17 and 26 by May 24.

The local chapter was formed three years ago and sent contestants to the national competition in drama and dance in 1984 and 1985. The deadline for entries this year is Feb. 25. First, second and third prizes of $50, $25 and $20 will be awarded by the local chapter. Gerry McAllister of the Mandeville Art Gallery at UC San Diego has contest rules and information.

CONSIDERED ADVICE: Gallery director Cora Boyd is now Cora Boyd, art advisor (with an “o,” please). After 12 years of operating galleries, most recently downtown’s Quint Gallery, Boyd has gone into the consulting business, although she prefers the term advisor to consultant. Most artists, she said, “are struggling with their careers and haven’t the vaguest idea of how to realize their goals.” Her plan is to offer guidance--”to fill in the gaps”--where needed.

“A lot of artists whose work is really good can’t get into galleries,” she said. “If it’s not the artwork, maybe it’s the artist.” Boyd will match artists with appropriate galleries, guide artists in matters of human relations, and offer criticism. “I can tell them how to work with museums and deal with other art professionals,” she said. “Artists can be pretty obnoxious when they’re trying to get their career under way. That whole desperate move can put people off.”

ARTBEATS: Tijuana’s Centro Cultural is sponsoring four concerts by the San Diego Symphony at the center’s new 900-seat theater. The noon concerts will be Feb. 16, March 16, May 4 and June 8. Tickets are an incredible deal at a $10 top. . . . New Zealand playwright Robert Lord, whose “Bert and Maisy” closed Sunday at the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage, will have his “The Travelling Squirrel” presented in a prepared reading at 8 p.m. Jan. 27 at the Carter as part of the Globe’s Play Discovery Program.