Symphony Candidate Shuns Labels : San Diego County

If you believe the rumors that emanate from Symphony Hall, Austrian conductor Hans Graf is a likely candidate to become the San Diego Symphony’s next music director. Graf is one of three or four conductors on executive director Wesley Brustad’s list, according to the local purveyors of arts gossip. Orchestra officials, of course, will say no more than “he’s someone we’re taking a good look at.”

Symphony patrons will get their chance to give the 40-year-old maestro from Salzburg the once-over when he makes his local debut tonight in an all-Berlioz concert at Symphony Hall. Although Graf is not well-known in this country, as principal conductor of Salzburg’s Mozarteum Orchestra he has received favorable notices conducting his troops in a few North American tours. Just three weeks ago, he conducted his first American orchestra in Buffalo, N. Y.

During a leisurely interview, the easy-going Graf displayed no undue eagerness for the San Diego post.

“I’m not very good at projecting my own future,” Graf said when asked what he might expect as director of an American orchestra. “I’ve always been like the character in the German folk tale ‘Hans im Gluck’--happy in a benign way. Until I had conducted an American orchestra, I had no idea of what the working atmosphere would be.”

Graf became the Salzburg orchestra’s principal conductor in 1984, and his current contract will keep him there until 1992.

“Eight years is a good point to stop at. You don’t want to wait (to leave) until nobody wants to see you anymore,” he said.

Graf’s career outside his native Austria has taken him to Leningrad, where he studied conducting and met his Russian wife, and to Baghdad, where he had his first orchestra. In 1975, the Iraqi National Orchestra was a 70-member ensemble that performed twice a month.

“Although the musicians were mainly Iraqi, the first-chair players were Russians sent by their government,” he explained. The conditions in prewar Baghdad were still primitive, however, and Graf had to copy out parts for the players from his own study scores when the piece was not in the orchestra’s music library. But, according to Graf, building an orchestra in a non-Western environment made a conductor of him in ways that his conservatory studies could never have done.

“I came back to Europe after a year,” he said, “because they were not as interested in European music as they were in restoring Arabic music.”

Graf is very touchy about being labeled a specialist in any particular area of the orchestral repertory. Perhaps his position with the Mozarteum Orchestra, whose identity is bound up in a century-old tradition of Mozart performance, has made him uneasy about labels.

“For me, it’s too early to narrow the field into any special area. I will wait 10 or 15 years before I do that. Of course, in my orchestra, we have to do a lot of Mozart.”

He noted that the group is close to finishing a recording project of all 41 Mozart symphonies for Capriccio, a small German record label.

“When you do Mozart, you have to do much more in order to return to Mozart. Otherwise, your conducting becomes anemic.”

The later symphonies of his fellow Austrian Anton Bruckner are a current passion, and his Salzburgers have just performed Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. For those who associate the Mozarteum Orchestra with its 45-member touring ensemble--an orchestra too small by half for Wagner and Bruckner--Graf explained that half of his 90-member Mozarteum Orchestra remains in Austria to continue performing while their colleagues tour.

When asked to enumerate his favorite American composers, Graf acknowledged that this is an area in which he is less than knowledgeable.

“Well, I like Edgard Varese, if you want to call him American,” said Graf. (Born and educated in Europe, Varese eventually became an American citizen.) “I like Gershwin, of course, but then who doesn’t?” Graf then attempted to expand his list of American interests by invoking his admiration for Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.

But Graf did not fudge when asked to describe the biggest problem facing today’s symphony orchestra.

“Worldwide, the greatest danger comes from a dying audience. Everywhere, it’s getting smaller and older--we need to find new audiences.”

He noted that the pessimists proclaim there is no longer any need for the cumbersome, expensive, labor-intensive symphony orchestra.

“They say that everything has already been recorded on CD, that the symphony is a problem-making institution whose income is not big enough to support it. Even in Austria, politicians are beginning to think this way. I don’t think, however, that the orchestra is really moribund. We must justify to our audiences that the orchestra is a necessary expression of our culture and life. Otherwise we will be just a musical museum.”