CONLON MAKES MARK ON 2 CONTINENTS

Conductor James Conlon doesn’t buy the standard line that unappreciated American artists must move to Europe to make a reputation.

“I had all the opportunities in the world (here),” the 37-year old conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic said in a recent phone interview. “I had a career in America from my early 20s, conducting absolutely every major orchestra in America. . . . I was not at all dissatisfied. I just love life in Europe more.”

The conductor will make his local appearance with the touring Dutch orchestra at 8 tonight at El Camino College. The program will feature Bella Davidovich as soloist.

Conlon’s European career recently took another major leap forward when he was appointed chief conductor of the Cologne Opera, beginning in 1989. His contract with the Rotterdam orchestra--this is his fourth season--also has been extended though 1991. He will hold both positions concurrently.

But his American career isn’t stagnating, either. Conlon will start a three-year Verdi cycle at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1988, continue his eighth season as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival, and conduct “Boris Godunov” this season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Conlon, born in New York, laughed as he recalled his first trip to Europe while still a student at the Juilliard School of Music.

“I thought I would go for a summer and get all cultured-up,” he said. “Of course, it was a thrilling experience. I’d seen enough and been stimulated enough to motivate me for 10 years, but I wanted to go back again and again. . . . A decade wasn’t enough. I wanted to be there all the time. Eventually it shows in your work.”

Conlon explained the importance of working in Europe: “As an artist, 99% of my work is dealing with an imported culture. Classical music is basically an imported culture. The whole tradition is a European invention, cultivated over the centuries. That culture is what is written in between the notes of every piece.”

However, Conlon decried the general tendency in the 20th Century to divorce music from its surrounding culture and to view it merely as a collection of sounds.

That viewpoint is typical of a conductor who considers it his job “not to impose my personality on the piece, but to surrender . . . to the piece so that it flows through me, from the composer, through the orchestra, to the listener.”

Complicating the process, said Conlon, are distinctions between orchestras.

“Orchestras have an almost immediate identification with their own music, stated or unstated, whether they know it or not. I’ve had the experience with the Orchestre National de France, of seeing a piece of Debussy or Ravel come alive without saying a word. Why? Because so much of that music in their blood. It’s just there. . . .

“You might do the same piece in Germany and England and find yourself rehearsing to produce feelings and colors that the players are capable of playing, but don’t come to idiomatically or naturally.”

Conlon doesn’t expect these cultural differences to last forever, however.

“There’s a very slow process of all the world orchestras starting to sound more and more similar. That’s both good and bad, but inevitable, just the way it’s happening in life.

“There is so much more communication between these cultures, that slowly these barriers are breaking down. But along with the barriers is lost some essential cultural and ethnic identification.”

Conlon feels that the Rotterdam Philharmonic, currently on a 12-city, coast-to-coast United States tour, straddles these traditions.

“One of the great advantages of Holland and an orchestra like the Rotterdam is that Holland stands at the crossroads of these cultures and has the ability to digest French and German traditions,” he said.

“The Rotterdam Philharmonic is a very cosmopolitan orchestra, with players from 17 or 18 countries. It is one of few orchestras that can play French and German music equally well.”