CARDENES, DISGUSTED, LEAVES S.D. SYMPHONY

Andres Cardenes, concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony since November, 1985, revealed Monday that he will leave the area to take a teaching position at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“I will start as associate professor this September,” said Cardenes, “replacing Ruggiero Ricci on Michigan’s music faculty.”

“I’ve had enough of the whole situation,” said the 30-year-old musician, referring to last fall’s lockout of the orchestra musicians by management, the cancellation of the 1986-87 season, and the dissolution of the orchestra in January. “I want it to be over with. I’m not happy that the situation has dragged on with all this mud-slinging in the press.”

Cardenes also expressed his extreme dissatisfaction with symphony playing as a profession. “Over the last four years, I found that I did not have much in common with the orchestra setting. I don’t want to play with an orchestra ever again,” he said. His responsibilities at the university, noted for its music department, will include teaching 12 violin students, conducting a weekly master class and leading a chamber music class.

At the invitation of former symphony music director David Atherton, the Cuban-born violinist came to San Diego from Salt Lake City, where he was concertmaster of the Utah Symphony and a professor of music at the University of Utah. He had been an assistant professor of music at Indiana University from 1980-82.

Cardenes sounded bitter over the disintegration of the San Diego situation. “I had to get out of my (Utah Symphony) contract nine months early . . . only to find this mess here,” he said.

At Moscow’s 1982 Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition, Cardenes won a bronze medal. He had also won a bronze medal at the 1980 Sibelius International Competition in Helsinki, at that time the highest prize ever awarded an American musician by that Finnish competition. Bringing a young concertmaster of Cardenes’ caliber to San Diego was considered one of Atherton’s coups.

“There is a shortage of concertmasters in the United States today,” he said, “and I have been approached by lots of orchestras.” Cardenes said he turned them all down in favor of resuming an academic career.

“Symphony orchestras today are so busy struggling to stay afloat that their music suffers,” he said. “Instead of being concerned with making music, orchestra players are worried about the conductor, money and their social status. I’m not interested in all that--I just want to play music.”

He will spend 10 days on a European trip, then return to San Diego to prepare for his appearance in a host of summer festivals, his usual summer occupation. In addition to appearing with the Indianapolis Symphony, he will play at music festivals in Alaska, Utah and New York state.

San Diego audiences will hear him in the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s Summerfest ’87 in August.