Bernstein Protege Reportedly Gets Pacific Symphony Post

Lucas Richman, a 24-year-old protege of conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, is expected to sign a contract Friday as the Pacific Symphony’s assistant conductor for the 1988-89 concert season, sources close to the orchestra said Wednesday.

Richman, reached at his West Los Angeles home Wednesday evening, said Pacific Symphony officials informed him last month that he was their choice among four musicians who auditioned by conducting the orchestra. Richman said it would be his first full-time professional engagement, although he shared podiums in Europe and Moscow with Bernstein this summer and guest-conducted the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

“I’ve worked a lot with student orchestras and I’ve done some guest conducting, but this will be a new experience for me. And it is an opportunity I’m looking forward to a lot,” Richman said.

He said he expects his duties to include some pops and classical concerts and assisting with a chamber music series the ensemble plans. “My contract is supposed to be for one year, but we talked about a two-year engagement.”

Outgoing music director Keith Clark was not included in the process of selecting his assistant. Asked Wednesday about Richman’s pending contract, Clark said: “It is unusual that a music director not be involved in the selection of his own assistant, but I do know that he is a fine young man, and I want to be supportive of his career and his work with the Pacific Symphony.”

Clark’s contract with the orchestra was not renewed after an apparently bitter dispute with Louis G. Spisto, the Pacific’s executive director. The 1988-89 season will be his final one with the group he founded in 1978. Spisto could not be reached for comment Wednesday about Richman’s appointment.

Richman, the son of television actor Peter Mark Richman, was raised in Woodland Hills and entered UCLA at 16 to study violin. He graduated from UCLA and completed graduate studies in conducting at USC last year.

Richman, who is also a composer, was conductor-in-training of the Young Musicians Foundation Orchestra for three years until 1987, which won him generally high marks as a promising talent. Times music writer Daniel Cariaga wrote that Richman showed “aplomb and no small amount of authority” when he led the orchestra in a “solid reading” of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” overture in 1985.

In the programs shared with Bernstein, Richman conducted the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra.

Edmundo Diaz del Campo, Pacific Symphony’s first assistant conductor, resigned in August, 1987, over alleged broken promises, lack of opportunities to conduct and friction between himself and Clark.