SYMPHONY’S NEW SEASON A REAL MIX

A smattering of big-name soloists, a new series combining films and live performance of 20th-Century music, and a return of the popular great composers series will highlight the San Diego Symphony’s 1986-87 season.

Music director David Atherton, recently returned from conducting the BBC Symphony and Stockholm Philharmonic, announced the coming season Tuesday morning at Symphony Hall.

On the more traditionally structured subscription series, which will open Oct. 23, audiences will hear the gamut of soloists from violinist Pinchas Zukerman, pianist Alicia de Larrocha and cellist Lynn Harrell to concertmaster Andres Cardenes with pianist-for-a-night Atherton in the Haydn Concerto for Violin and Piano.

Composer in residence Bernard Rands will preside over the world premiere of his new work “Hiraeth” for Cello and Orchestra on Feb. 19, 1987, and will return later in the season to conduct a retrospective of his other compositions written for San Diego.

Describing the five programs on the “Sounds Unusual” series, Atherton said, “This is an area of music close to my heart.” Films made for British television by pianist Paul Crossley and Atherton on 20th-Century composers will be shown on the first half of each concert, followed by a live performance of a related work.

“For those who find this music somewhat daunting,” said Atherton, “these 40-minute color films, each one about a landmark work of our own century, will make this idiom easier to assimilate.”

For the first offering of this novel series, Dec. 16, Atherton will conduct a staged version of Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” after a film about the composer’s early Russian chamber opera, “Renard.” The next month on the same series, members of the London Sinfonietta, a chamber orchestra Atherton founded in 1967, will make their local debut in Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire.”

Attempting to cement ties across the border--this season the orchestra has inaugurated a series of performances in Tijuana--Atherton will conduct a program devoted to orchestral works by Mexican composers on Dec. 4.

Noted American composer Gunther Schuller will return to San Diego to conduct two of his most recent pieces, the Bassoon Concerto and “Jubilee Music,” on April 24, 1987. Margaret Hillis, director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus and dean of American symphonic choral directors, will conduct the San Diego Master Chorale and the local orchestra in Verdi’s “Four Sacred Pieces” on May 22, 1987.

For the traditionalists, Atherton has chosen Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Mozart, Brahms and Schubert to feature on the great composers series, with a single concert devoted entirely to each composer.

Atherton said he will conduct 21 of the new season’s 30 programs, an unusually high proportion for a resident conductor to lead by current standards. Assistant conductor David Commanday, who made his conducting debut with the orchestra last month, is slated to appear on three programs later in the 1986-87 season.