SummerFest ’88 Plans Ambitious Music Programs

More orchestral music, more community involvement and more adventuresome programming will characterize SummerFest ‘88, La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s two-week festival.

Two orchestral programs--one with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra playing Bloch, Purcell and J. S. Bach, and the other featuring a select string ensemble performing Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”--will highlight this third incarnation of San Diego’s most sophisticated summer musical attraction.

The festival’s artistic director, Heiichiro Ohyama, will conduct both orchestras, as well as play the viola in three of the five chamber music concerts. The two-week festival will begin Aug. 19.

“We’re being a bit more adventurous this year,” said Ohyama, announcing the season Tuesday along with Geoffrey Brooks, executive director of the society. “On every program there will be one piece which is slightly unusual. Last year, we had a Beethoven work on every concert, but this time I don’t think we need that security blanket.”

Ohyama, who is the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s principal violist and assistant conductor, will also be host to a young people’s concert Aug. 28.

The award-winning film “From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China” will be screened Aug. 24, with a discussion led by pianist David Golub, who appears in the film. All of the festival’s public concerts, as well as the “Mao to Mozart” film, will be held in the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art’s Mandeville Auditorium.

The museum will co-sponsor the film and another La Jolla institution, UC San Diego’s department of music, will host the master classes given by several of the festival’s participants.

In addition to the usual roster of international soloists--including violinist Ani Kavafian, cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, oboist Allan Vogel, and pianist Jeffrey Kahane--nearly a third of the soloists will be San Diego musicians or musicians associated with the local musical scene.

The festival will bring back to the city Andres Cardenes, former concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony, and Frank Almond Jr., local violin prodigy who placed at Moscow’s 1986 Tchaikovsky competition and is now finishing his studies at Juilliard. Other local performers include San Diego Symphony principal players Damian Bursull-Hall, flute; David Peck, clarinet, and Dennis Michel, bassoon.

Although the festival’s budget is a modest $175,000, the La Jolla society has prudently run its own summer functions in the black. Last season, the society’s board of directors retired a debt of $84,000 incurred while importing the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival during the summers of 1982-1984.

According to Brooks, last season’s SummerFest concerts will be broadcast on KPBS-FM, beginning June 5, at 10:30 a.m.