MUSIC / KENNETH HERMAN : New Music Director Like Fresh Air for Symphony

Yoav Talmi’s appointment as the San Diego Symphony music director is welcome news to the San Diego music community.

In five guest appearances over the past two years with the local orchestra, the Israeli musician has established his credentials as a persuasive conductor with a refreshing sense of orchestral programming.

Talmi is a musician’s musician. He is thoughtful and probing, more concerned with substance than with packaging. His track record as an orchestra builder, notably with the Israel Chamber Orchestra, where he was music director from 1984-88, is precisely what the San Diego Symphony needs at this stage of its musical recovery.

Others have pointed out Talmi’s strong character and the stability of his personal life as highly desirable virtues--especially for a music director taking the position vacated by former music director David Atherton, whose indiscretions were divisive, to say the least.

If there are any apparent shortcomings, it is Talmi’s lack of personal charisma. The passion he elicits from an orchestra--and this he does well and without histrionics--is not evident in social situations. Perhaps the Israeli conductor’s quiet manners and earnest musicianship will endear him to the local community much as the decidely unflashy Herbert Blomstedt has won over the San Francisco Symphony audiences and the wider Bay Area community.

It is not entirely fair to say that Talmi is clearly a better conductor than the other candidates--two seasons of guest conductors who have come through San Diego for the equivalent of musical one-night stands. Regular symphony patrons and the local critics simply have had more opportunities to hear Talmi than the others.

Bernhard Klee, a sophisticated German who was through more than once, made the local symphony sound quite elegant, and he had a special touch for the music of Berg and Webern. Klee, however, claimed he had no desire for the responsibilities of the San Diego post.

Another West German whose hat was supposedly in the ring, Christoph Perick, would have brought the most cachet to San Diego; in opera circles especially he presides over the most prestigious podiums.

Perick will appear twice next season as a guest conductor, presiding over the hearty German fare that is his calling card, but not as music director designate.

Talmi has won that title. May he wear it well.

The Latvians are coming. Wednesday night the 90-voice women’s chorus from Latvia, Dzintars, will bring its unique sound to San Diego’s First Presbyterian Church. Although this ensemble has won many choral competitions in Europe, its monthlong California tour is its first North American foray.

Critics have been generous in tossing bouquets to these belles of the Baltic. Jesse Hamlin of the San Francisco Chronicle praised their “purity, precision, and dynamic subtlety” when they sang earlier this month at Davies Symphony Hall in downtown San Francisco.

Like the popular Bulgarian women’s choirs, the Latvian group specializes in folk music, but it also champions the choral music of contemporary Baltic composers.

At the conclusion of each of their American programs, it sings all five verses of “America the Beautiful” in both English and Latvian.

And where else will you hear that?

The eyes have it. Scripps Memorial’s Mericos Eye Institute in La Jolla and Point Loma’s National Vision Research Institute see eye to eye on one issue. Each organization is holding a musical fund-raiser featuring a noted solo musician this season.

On May 6, at La Jolla’s Sherwood Auditorium, pianist Leonard Pennario will play a benefit program for the good folk at Mericos. At 65, Pennario remains the keyboard virtuoso who played chamber music with Heifetz and Piatigorsky in his heyday.

Next month, classical guitarist Pepe Romero will play a benefit recital for the National Vision Research Institute at the First Unitarian Church in Hillcrest. Romero’s program will feature the Spanish repertory for which he is known, including works by Giuliani, Sor, Sanz and Lauro. He will be joined by his teen-aged daughter, Angelina, who will accompany him on the piano in a sonatina by Diabelli. Angelina’s participation in the recital, which marks her musical debut with her father, is particularly apt for this event. Ten years ago, Angelina was treated by National Vision’s Dr. Perry Binder for a traumatic eye injury.

Just say, “No!” Principal trumpet Calvin Price of the San Diego Symphony recently won his audition with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Price joined the local orchestra last summer, and his stellar contributions to the performance of the brass section have not gone unnoticed.

The pull to return to Pennsylvania is strong. Price grew up in the Philadelphia area and toured with the Philadelphia Orchestra on four European tours from 1982-87. At the moment, Price says he is considering whether he will give up his first-chair position with the San Diego Symphony for the position of second trumpet and assistant principal with Philadelphia. As Nancy Reagan taught us, Calvin, “Just say, ‘No!’ ”