SUMMERFEST ’86 STARTS ON FRIDAY IN LA JOLLA

Summerfest ‘86, the chamber music series being mounted by the La Jolla Chamber Music Society beginning Friday and ending Aug. 10, will offer, according to Heiichiro Ohyama, its artistic director, two weekends’ worth of chamber music in more or less intimate settings in and around La Jolla.

The soft-spoken Ohyama--for eight years principal violist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the conductor of three separate West Coast chamber orchestras--says there have been a few minor changes in the festival schedule since it was first announced in March.

Pianist Anton Kuerti, the Canadian-based Beethoven and Schubert specialist, has joined the roster. Due to scheduling difficulties, another pianist, Yefim Bronfman, has canceled.

Also, two previously announced San Diego County locations for the concerts have been abandoned, says Geoffrey Brooks, executive director of the society, and Ohyama’s partner in planning Summerfest ‘86, “because it makes more sense for everybody--players and audience alike--to keep within a centralized area.”

Why start a festival in these lean times for musical organizations? Brooks says the success of the La Jolla society in bringing the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival to San Diego and environs in the summers of 1983 and 1984 gave him courage.

“Heiichiro and I saw the large public response to those series, and began to think how we could put on a comparable festival for less money. Obviously, mounting the series from here was the answer.”

The cost of the 1986 festival (eight concerts) will be approximately what bringing the Santa Fe forces from New Mexico (for six concerts) was in 1984: $100,000, says Brooks. And with no projected deficit.

As for the repertory of these seven public concerts (and one private recital), it remains basically the same as first announced, Ohyama confirms.

“This first year--and we are secretly planning a second festival, but we won’t talk about it until after the first one is over--the programs contain some works you might call the Top 10 of chamber music. That’s because we want to reach the most people as we start out.

“As we go along, however, our programs will become more adventurous,” the peripatetic violist points out. “Even in 1986, however, there are many 20th-Century composers represented: Poulenc, Shostakovich, Nielsen, Bax, Prokofiev.”

Representative of the scope and quality Ohyama and friends plan for this festival, he says, is the opening-night program, scheduled Friday at 8 p.m. in Sherwood Hall at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.

The program begins with Faure’s Piano Quartet in C minor, Opus 15, as played by Gyorgy Pauk (violin), Ohyama (viola), Matt Haimovitz (cello) and David Golub (piano); crests on Bartok’s Contrasts, as performed by David Shifrin (clarinet), Pauk and Golub, and concludes with Tchaikovsky’s sextet, “Souvenir de Florence,” with violinists Miriam Fried and Masuko Ushioda, violists Nobuko Imai and Ohyama, and cellists Ralph Kirshbaum and Haimovitz.

Subsequent concerts take place Saturday at 8 p.m., next Sunday at 3 and 8, Aug. 9 at 8 p.m. and Aug. 10 at 3 and 8 p.m. Sherwood Hall is the location of the concerts, Friday through next Sunday; Mandeville Auditorium at UC San Diego hosts the evening events, Aug. 9 and 10; the matinee on Aug. 10 takes place in St. James-by-the-Sea Church in downtown La Jolla.

In addition, the festival will host a private recital--at which Fried, Golub and Kirshbaum will perform--for major contributors, Aug. 8 in a private home in the area.

Among the 30 performers completing the roster for this first festival are pianists Jeffrey Kahane, Vivian Weilerstein, Karen Follingstad and Edith Orloff; violinists Donald Weilerstein, Andres Cardenes, cellists Ronald Leonard, Margaret Moores and Jeffrey Levenson and hornist Warren Gref.

Two master classes will be given in conjunction with the festival. Violinist Fried will teach the first, Aug. 6 at 7:30 p.m. in Smith Hall at San Diego State University; cellist Leonard will give the second, Aug. 7, also at 7:30 p.m. and at San Diego State.

Information: (619) 459-3724.

AT THE BOWL: A pride of pianists and a legendary harmonica-player make this fourth week of the Hollywood Bowl summer season attractive. Jeffrey Kahane, who began his studies here in Los Angeles, then completed his training in San Francisco before winning important international competitions, starts the week off by playing Mozart’s C-major Concerto, K. 467, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under David Zinman, Tuesday night in the Bowl.

The Labeque Sisters, the French pianists, give a recital in Cahuenga Pass, Wednesday night at 8:30. Their program includes Bach’s Concerto in C, BWV 1061, Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Pianos, and pieces by Albeniz and Infante.

Mona Golabek, who probably never intended to specialize in the Piano Concerto by Edvard Grieg, but seems in recent seasons to have achieved just such a specialization, plays that Opus 16, with the Philharmonic and Zinman, Thursday night. Also on the program: Kodaly’s Dances From Galanta and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

For the Friday and Saturday events at the Bowl, conductor Erich Kunzel returns to lead a concert of music by American composers, with harmonica-player Larry Adler as soloist. Among the writers represented will be Copland, Rodgers, Gershwin, Joplin and Sousa. Fireworks will accompany the Sousa pieces.

BRIEFLY: The fifth annual Kapalua Music Festival, featuring clarinetist David Shifrin, violist Yizhak Schotten (founder and director of the festival), the Meliora Quartet, violinist Joseph Swensen, trumpeter Anthony Plog, soprano Carol Webber and cellist David Hardy is scheduled at the Maui resort, Aug. 8-10 and 15-17. For information: (808) 669-5273. . . . Tenor Warren Ellsworth will sing the role of Siegmund in “Die Walkuere” in the new production of Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” at Seattle Opera, Aug. 2-7 and 10-15, replacing Barry Busse, who is ill. . . . Sponsored by Chevron Corporation USA, Murry Sidlin will conduct six different orchestras in a multimedia Aaron Copland program (with three-screen photography by James Westwater) during the 1986-87 season. The first performance will be given by the New Orleans Symphony, Sept. 5 and 6.