THE BEETHOVEN ‘ODYSSEY’

Armed with scores and, one hopes, a good Southern California road map, the Emerson String Quartet will begin a traversal of the Beethoven Quartets this week, in what is billed as “A Beethoven Odyssey.” And that it is--musically and geographically.

The New York-based musicians will journey through those 16 seminal chamber works, offering them in strict chronological order, and traveling to six concert sites to do so.

“We’ve done the Beethoven cycle this way before, six years ago in Vermont,” violinist Eugene Drucker said. “Actually, I think the idea is better suited to Los Angeles, since it’s so spread out here. I just hope a large part of our audience will follow us. I’m sure we’ll have a core audience, plus each site has its own regular subscribers.”

Events will take place at Wadsworth Theater on Friday, Beverly Theatre next Sunday, El Camino College on Jan. 16, Beckman Auditorium at Caltech on Jan. 18, All Saints Church in Beverly Hills on Jan. 23 and Bridges Hall of Music in Claremont on Jan. 25. Normally competing organizations, such as the Da Camera Society and the Coleman Chamber Music Assn., will serve as presenters.

Drucker acknowledged that programming the quartets in order of composition bucks the tradition of offering an early, middle and late work at each concert. The Wadsworth event, for example, consists of Opus 18, Nos. 1-3. “The early-middle-late concept presents a microcosm in one evening,” he said. (In fact, the group will offer such a program Jan. 19 at Laguna Beach High School.)”I feel that playing them in order gives an extra inducement for people to come for the whole cycle. They’ll be intrigued enough to return for more.”

And how does such a scheme affect the players? “The third program is the most wearing,” Drucker said. “We play all three from Opus 59 (at El Camino), and that’s a lot of music for one night. Very tiring for us. Of course, they’re all tough--even the early ones.”

By offering the music chronologically, the Emerson has side-stepped the controversy surrounding the “Grosse Fuge,” originally intended as the last movement to Opus 130 but replaced, at a publisher’s request, by a shorter, lighter finale in 1826. Some ensembles prefer to play the fugue separately --it’s even been arranged for string orchestra. But the Emerson will honor Beethoven’s original intention and place the massive piece at the end of Opus 130.

Since that rewritten last movement was the last music Beethoven wrote, it will serve as the concluding work on the Emerson series. “The fugue works fine as a finale, but it’s not bad the other way either. Somehow, though, doing the fugue by itself lessens its impact. Beethoven received a lot of complaints in his lifetime: The music was too hard, too long, too complex. I’ve always admired his response. He would tell them, ‘My music is not for this time. It is for the future.”

HEIFETZ AND THE KORNGOLD CONCERTO: It’s been more than 40 years, but George Korngold has a vivid memory of the day Jascha Heifetz came over to the house to hear Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s new Violin Concerto. “My father sat down at the piano to play it for him,” the younger Korngold said. “After the third movement, Heifetz cried out, ‘Hey, I’m not Paganini, you know!’ But soon after he had taken the work home, he called my father and asked him to make changes in that movement--he wanted it to be tougher.”

The concerto will be played by Los Angeles Philharmonic concertmaster Sidney Weiss at programs by the orchestra at the Music Center this week. Weiss’ performances are part of the AT&T; American Encore series--the same series that introduced local audiences to Harold Shapero’s Symphony for Classical Orchestra late last year.

Though the Korngold work has always been closely associated with Heifetz over the years--he introduced the work and made the first recording--George Korngold points out that the concerto was not originally intended for the celebrated violinist. “My father wrote it for Bronislaw Huberman. Heifetz had heard about the work and asked if he could come over and hear it. As it turned out, Huberman couldn’t give the premiere, due to scheduling problems.” Huberman died in 1947 and thus never played the work, which received its premiere in St. Louis the same year.

The concerto “is quite popular in Europe these days,” Korngold said. When it received its St. Louis premiere, public and critical response was ecstatic, he said: “One critic wrote that it would endure as long as the Mendelssohn (concerto). But when it was played in New York, the critics came down hard and nearly killed it.”

The younger Korngold is hopeful the concerto--among other works--will be heard often this year: May 29 marks the late composer’s 90th birthday.

IN DANCE: The Bella Lewitzky Dance Company will offer the U.S. premiere of “Facets” Saturday night in Marsee Auditorium, El Camino College. Lewitzky’s new work was commissioned last summer by the Chateauvallon Festival in France, where it was first performed. Also on the El Camino agenda: the newly remounted “Five” (1974) and “8 dancers/8 lights” (1985).