CLASSICAL MUSIC / KENNETH HERMAN : Francophile Favorites Storm Local Music Scene

While most Americans are observing Independence Day today, true Francophiles are waiting another 10 days to unleash their patriotic celebrations. Since this year’s Le Quatorze juillet commemorates the 200th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, some musicians are using the bicentennial theme to tout their Gallic wares.

Even the San Diego Symphony SummerPops is calling its July 12-15 program, “A Night at the Moulin Rouge,” a celebration of the French bicentennial. (Let’s see . . . the storming of the dance band . . . the revolt of the bartenders--history can be so confusing.)

On July 9, at 8 p.m., harpsichordist Jennifer Paul will descend on La Jolla’s Congregational Church with a program of French keyboard music that spans the late 17th Century up to the period of the Revolution.

“It’s really an overview of French music up to the eve of the Revolution,” explained Paul from her home in Los Angeles. “I’ll be playing music by three members of the Couperin dynasty, Forqueray and Royer. The program ends with Claude Balbastre’s Variations on ‘La Marseillaise.’

Symbolically, after going through his variations, Balbastre adds a short piece at the end which is kind of like a victory dance.”

Paul, who grew up in San Diego’s North County, has performed on various local concert series and was last heard here in December, 1988 as soloist in Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto with the San Diego Symphony. Sunday’s recital, sponsored by the San Diego Early Music Society, will be her test run of the program, which she will later record for broadcast by KUSC-FM, one of the Los Angeles classical music stations.

For her all-French program, Paul will bring down her own instrument, a two-keyboard harpsichord (early music buffs call them “two-manual doubles”) built in the style of the noted 18th-Century French instrument maker Pascal Taskin. Unlike the modern piano, which became standardized in the 19th-Century, Baroque harpsichords were built in a variety of ways, depending on the country and era in which they were made.

Paul noted that the harpsichord was not a particularly popular instrument by the time of the French Revolution.

“In the late 18th Century, most keyboard music was written for the new fortepiano. Even the Balbastre piece I’m playing on my program sounds like it was really intended for the fortepiano.”

The harpsichord in France was subjected to further indignities, according to Paul, although its coup de grace was not entirely dictated by changing musical tastes.

“During the great blizzard of 1811, soldiers broke into French castles throughout the country and chopped up harpsichords for firewood. That’s why there are so few authentic French Baroque harpsichords extant.”

July Fourth is Labor Day. The San Diego Symphony management did not confuse its holidays. But it did turn Independence Day into a labor day for the orchestra musicians by adding a July Fourth performance of “Americana Salute” under guest conductor Carl Hermanns to the week’s usual Wednesday through Saturday schedule.

To make this added holiday concert more appealing, the symphony has reduced the price of tickets in gallery bleachers to $5 from the usual $8. Taking into account the typical heavy traffic in Mission Bay on summer holidays, the symphony is offering parking at the Sports Arena today with shuttle service to Hospitality Point beginning at 5:30 p.m.

Working those ivories. While this year’s Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has faded from the headlines, two of the competition’s semifinalists are back to work. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, the only French semifinalist, is preparing for his debut with the San Diego Symphony next week. Bavouzet will play Ravel’s G Major Piano Concerto under the baton of guest conductor Bruce Ferden. The sole American semifinalist, Coronado native Kevin Kenner, will enter the University of Maryland’s William Kapell Competition next week in College Park, Md. The week-long contest will give Kenner a second chance at a $15,000 first prize.

Monday night in Balboa Park, the young virtuoso organist David Higgs will ply his trade on the mighty Spreckels Organ as part of the Spreckels Organ Society’s Summer Series. The Berkeley-based musician recently made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony, playing Barber’s “Toccata Festiva” under music director Herbert Blomstedt, and was a featured recitalist at the 1987 International Congress of Organists in Cambridge, England. His San Diego program will include blockbusters by Franz Liszt, Marcel Dupre, and J. S. Bach.

More steamy than Strauss’ ‘Salome’? A press release lauding the San Diego Opera’s new marketing video first explained that the 12-minute video will be the centerpiece of a community education and fund-raising campaign. A single-sentence paragraph, however, invites salacious speculation.

“Noting that ‘opera is a pretty sexy art form,’ (general director Ian) Campbell reveals his ambition to open the season in the year 2000 with the first commissioned opera of the 21st century.” Does this non sequitur mean that Campbell is ordering an X-rated opera for San Diego?