CLASSICAL MUSIC / KENNETH HERMAN : Cardenes Just Can’t Keep Fingers Out of an Orchestra

During the San Diego Symphony’s last major crisis--the canceled 1986-87 season--the home team lost several key players, including music director David Atherton, concertmaster Andres Cardenes, and principal horn player Jerry Folsom. Although the three left the symphony, each has found a regular place in the San Diego music scene.

Earlier this summer, Atherton launched his 10-day Mostly Mozart Festival at the Old Globe Theatre. Folsom, now co-principal horn with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, can be heard when the orchestra plays its subscription concerts at Civic Theatre. And Cardenes has returned each August as part of the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s annual SummerFest.

When Cardenes announced that he was leaving the local symphony, he vowed he would not take an orchestra position again.

“Over the past four years, I found that I did not have much in common with the orchestra setting,” Cardenes told The Times in 1987. “I don’t want to play with an orchestra ever again.”

When Cardenes left San Diego, he joined the University of Michigan’s music faculty to replace virtuoso violinist Ruggiero Ricci. But Cardenes was not able to renounce orchestral playing entirely. Over the last two years he has commuted between Ann Arbor and Pittsburgh as the frequent guest concertmaster for the Pittsburgh Symphony. This year, Pittsburgh music director Lorin Maazel and the symphony management were able to persuade the reluctant Cardenes to sign a contract.

“It took me almost three years to make up my mind (about the Pittsburgh position),” explained Cardenes, who had been pursued by Pittsburgh even while he was San Diego’s concertmaster. “I had to be convinced of the orchestra’s stability,” he said, “and I wanted to find out how serious its artistic vision was.”

When Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University offered him a teaching position, Cardenes reconsidered Maazel’s offer. According to Cardenes, he was given a contract with unusually liberal terms.

“It’s quite flexible. I retain the right to pick and choose the conductors I want to play with,” he said. “I called a meeting with all of the Pittsburgh principal players to make certain they could live with this arrangement, where the concertmaster would not work all year long.”

The principals said yes, and so did Cardenes.

During the last year, besides teaching and performing--Cardenes played the Samuel Barber Violin Concerto 16 times with the Pittsburgh Symphony on tour this spring--he has been writing a biography of his mentor, Joseph Gingold. He intends to complete the book by November, in time for the Russian-born violinist’s 80th birthday. Cardenes spent a month in Hawaii to concentrate on his nascent literary effort, where he acknowledged trading stage fright for the writer’s block.

Cardenes maintains a healthy appetite for the summer festival circuit. In addition to performing in the La Jolla festival, his summer schedule includes New York state’s Skaneateles Festival and Utah’s Snowbird Festival, which Cardenes co-founded. Last month he was in Los Angeles to perform and record piano trios by Tchaikovsky and Arensky with pianist Mona Golabek.

On Friday night’s opening SummerFest ’89 program at Sherwood Auditorium, Cardenes will play the first violin part in Brahms B-flat Major Sextet. He will also perform the following two evenings. Due to the festival’s scheduling, however, he will not appear on any of the same programs with violinist Jimmy Lin. Perhaps if the La Jolla Chamber Music Society wishes to sponsor a sure-fire benefit next year, it might feature Lin and Cardenes together on the same concert. And, if the La Jollans really want to fill their coffers, they will stage a benefit tennis match between the two fiddlers, who, according to the grapevine, are as commanding on the tennis court as they are on the concert stage.

Over there, over there. From the San Diego Early Music Ensemble’s regular musical tours to Europe, early music aficionados on the Continent may have the mistaken notion that Southern California is a hotbed of early music. This group has been performing for 17 years and has managed a European tour at least every other summer. The five vocal soloists who make up the Early Music Ensemble leave Wednesday for their two-week tour of Switzerland, West Germany, France and the Netherlands.

“We keep bringing coals to Newcastle,” said alto and keyboard accompanist Vicki Heins-Shaw, “but they keep asking us back.”

This time the San Diegans’ programming will focus on the music of Renaissance master Josquin Despres, although they will also perform works by Claudio Monteverdi and other early Baroque stalwarts. The group will end its tour in Utrecht, where it will be presented by the Holland Festival of Music’s Fringe Festival. The other ensemble members are sopranos Constance Lawthers and Elisabeth Marti; tenor John Peeling and bass Philip Larson.

Everything’s coming up roses. According to the San Diego Symphony management, attendance for the first half of this season’s summer pops concerts is up an impressive 22% over last year, and the corresponding ticket income is up 36%. And for those who believe in numerology, put this in your coincidence file. The total attendance for the opening night of both the SummerPops’ Glenn Miller tribute and the all-Gershwin program was exactly the same: 3,129.