Semkow to Present Mozart at the Bowl

On the eve of his Hollywood Bowl debut, veteran Polish conductor Jerzy Semkow expresses some apprehension about making music in a massive amphitheater.

“I am just a little bit afraid of conducting Mozart in an outdoor place that holds 18,000 people,” Semkow, 59, said last week from his home in Monfort l’Amaury, outside Paris (“where Ravel lived”).

Reassured that Mozart has survived in Cahuenga Pass for nearly six decades, Semkow expresses relief, then talks about the two Bowl programs he conducts with the touring Pittsburgh Symphony, Thursday through Saturday nights.

About the agenda for the Tchaikovsky Spectacular, Friday and Saturday: “I think it only proper that a Polish conductor should begin the program with a Polonaise”--he refers to the one from “Eugene Onegin.”

About the B-flat-minor Piano Concerto (to be played by Barry Douglas--also making his Bowl debut) on the same program: “It is the prince of piano concertos.”

And, about the piano soloist on his Thursday concert: “Yefim Bronfman is a great young pianist, mature beyond his years.”

Semkow, who has held long-term conducting posts at, among other places, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the St. Louis Symphony, the Royal Danish Opera and the RAI Orchestra of Rome, is quick to confirm that he has never conducted in Los Angeles before.

“Actually, I have never even been in Los Angeles before,” he says. Leading these two programs--the Pittsburgh Symphony’s week-long engagement at the Bowl begins Tuesday and Wednesday, when it is led by another Polish-born, international conductor, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski--will be a pleasure, Semkow says.

“People may call these works warhorses, but that is not necessarily derogatory. The greatest music becomes familiar, and can be described that way. It is for us, the interpreters of every generation, to find and reveal again the greatness in these pieces.”

To do so, Semkow says, “is the highest calling. How lucky we are to be able to work at music, to share it with others.” Then, in speaking of Mozart’s “Linz” Symphony, which also appears on his Thursday program, Semkow quotes one of his mentors, Bruno Walter: “After the slow movement, proofs of the existence of God are not needed.”

PEOPLE: Sidney Weiss will play on two different violins at his recital, opening the season at the Fiske Museum at the Claremont Colleges, Sept. 11. With Jeanne Weiss--his musical partner and wife--at the piano, the concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will offer a program of sonatas by Leclair, Brahms and Faure, as well as shorter pieces by Smetana and Kreisler. For part of the performance, he will play on a recently restored violin by Andrea Guarneri, one built in the 17th Century and now part of the Fiske Museum collection. For the remainder, he will perform on a 20th-Century instrument of his own manufacture. Weiss has been a violin builder for more than 25 years. The performance is at 1 p.m. . . . Choreographer John Clifford will stage George Balanchine’s “Allegro” for Sacramento Ballet in September, going from there to the Midwest to stage two other Balanchine works, “Apollo” and “Concerto Barocco” for Ballet Chicago. For a performance scheduled Oct. 1, Clifford will choreograph a new production of Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” for the Da Camera Society of Houston, Texas. At this premiere, Allegra Kent will dance the role of the Princess, Steven Hoff the Soldier and Clifford, the Devil. . . . Baritone Yu Chen and sopranos Teri Koide and Keiko Takeshita are the top winners in the annual Asian Artist Competition of the Orange County Chinese Cultural Club, held May 28. Chen will be presented in recital by the Club, Sept. 17 at 3 p.m. at the Yamaha Music Center, 15455 Jeffrey Road, Irvine. . . . Clarinetist Mitchell Lurie, a member of the faculty of the School of Music at USC, will travel to France to participate in a series of master classes for reed instruments in Hyeres, Oct. 7-9. Hyeres, Lurie reminds us, is where “the cane for the reeds predominantly grows.”