PHILHARMONIC AWARDS COMMISSION TO LENTZ

The recipient of the first commission by the Los Angeles Philharmonic expressly for its New Music Group, composer Daniel Lentz, says, “I don’t know who it was in the organization who found me. I’m just glad they did.”

Lentz’s latest composition, for electronically processed solo voice and 15 instruments, will receive its world premiere Monday night in Japan America Theatre as performed by the Philharmonic’s New Music Group.

It is, according to its author, a quarter-hour piece using a text of e.e. cummings. Lentz calls it “the crack in the bell.”

“No, those words do not appear in the poem,” the composer said, between interviews at two local radio stations. “Actually, the poem is ‘next to of course god,’ and I have taken some liberties with it--like leaving out the final two lines. I realize doing so changes the meaning--omitting those lines makes an anthem into an anti-anthem. That’s what I meant to do.”

A former academic, Lentz was trained as a composer in Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania and at the University of Stockholm in Sweden. He came to California from Sweden in 1968, and taught at UC Santa Barbara for two years. He has not taught since 1973.

“I miss the students, but not the administration,” Lentz said. “My problem with teaching was that I found out that, as you teach, what you teach gets into your music. That might work for some people, but I didn’t like it at all.”

Now, the 43-year-old former pianist--he has not played professionally since an accident to his left hand six years ago--works only at composing, with some occasional work as conductor of his own scores.

“That’s the way it’s always been. Composers have to get along on commissions, on grants and on performances. It’s hard--but it’s never been any other way.”

The remainder of the 8 p.m. program, to be conducted by John Harbison, beginning his second season as director of the New Music Group, offers Stravinsky’s Octet, Harbison’s Variations for clarinet, violin and piano and Fred Lerdahl’s Fantasy Etudes.

ALSO AT THE PHILHARMONIC: Two Andre Previns will share the agenda at concerts this week by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Previn the Philharmonic music director will make his first appearances of the season, beginning Thursday. Previn the composer will also be present, in the form of “Principals” (1980). Later this season, his full-length theater piece, “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour,” will be presented. Also on the agenda this week: Walton’s Viola Concerto, with Philharmonic principal Heiichiro Ohyama as soloist, and Prokofiev’s cantata based on his film score to “Alexander Nevsky,” with mezzo-soprano Christine Cairns and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

NEW ORCHESTRA ADMINISTRATORS: Deborah Rutter, formerly orchestra manager with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has been named executive director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. She succeeds Wesley Brustad, who has his hands full these days as head of the struggling San Diego Symphony. Rutter, 30, who had originally left the Philharmonic this summer to help in her family’s business, insisted that her new job is nowhere near as perilous as Brustad’s. “The financials for this orchestra are excellent. At the start of last season, we had a $200,000 deficit. We ended the year with a surplus of $40,000.”

In addition to recent money problems, the orchestra has had to deal with a seemingly endless number of administrative change-overs. Such will not be the case with Rutter: “I don’t want to be here a short time,” she said. “That’s why I wanted--and got--a three-year contract.”

Now, all she has to do is find a music director. “We’re looking around,” Rutter said. “I’d love to name one by the end of this season, but just in case, we are signing guest conductors for next season as well.”

Rutter will be succeeded at the Philharmonic by Nancybell Coe, who had served as director of the Philharmonic Institute.

And speaking of the Philharmonic, the orchestra has named Ara Guzelimian to the new post of music administrator. Guzelimian will continue in his role as editor of the Philharmonic’s Upbeat! publication and as coordinator of the Upbeat Live! pre-concert lecture series. But, he said, his duties will also include planning concerts by the New Music Group and by the Chamber Music Society.

AND OTHER PEOPLE: The Roger Wagner Chorale is in the midst of a monthlong tour of the Orient. The 20-voice ensemble and its founder-conductor will visit Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Hawaii. In December, Wagner and company tour the East Coast.

This month, musicologist William Malloch will address a conference in Utrecht, Germany, devoted to different realizations of Mahler’s unfinished Symphony No. 10. Three orchestras will play three versions of the work during the festival.