Rozsnyai’s International Orchestra Expands Series

About to begin its third season, the orchestra of United States International University (USIU) in San Diego will this year play two series in the metropolitan San Diego area, plus what its founder, conductor Zoltan Rozsnyai calls, “the normal runouts--” to Tijuana and Ensenada and other places in Mexico the ensemble has visited in its opening seasons.

This is an unusual orchestra, the Hungarian-born conductor says. “They are not paid, but receive room and board and, after two years, master’s degrees.” Rozsnyai says 75% of the 55 instrumentalists in the group are non-Americans.

The orchestra will play two series this season: six concerts in Sherwood Hall at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, four in College Avenue Baptist Church in East San Diego. Among the guest artists will be pianists Ilse von Alpenheim, Gustavo Romero, Cecil Lytle and Nicolas Reveles, Belgian conductor Walter Proost (in his U.S. debut), harpist Susanna Mildonian, keyboardist Anthony Newman (playing the premiere performance os his own Piano Concerto), soprano Sylvia Wen, violinist Endre Granat and cellist Milos Sadlo.

Rozsnyai, as you may remember, is no stranger to San Diego. The 62-year-old musician has been music director of the San Diego (1967-71) and Knoxville (1978-84) Symphonies, was a founder of Philharmonica Hungarica (the ensemble of expatriate Hungarian musicians) as well as of the stillborn Golden State Opera in Los Angeles, and has been associated with USIU for a number of years. He says his USIU orchestra played a total of 38 concerts last year, and will give even more this season.

“It is, of course, an international orchestra, with many players from Asia, in the string sections in particular. In those sections, all players constantly revolve chairs, for the experience of leadership and playing in the section. Since all the players are already professionals, the fact that we have five 3-hour rehearsals a week creates a very strong ensemble.”

COMPETING: This weekend, 31 contestants in two preliminary rounds of the UCLA Piano Competition will compete--each one playing for 20 minutes in Schoenberg Hall Auditorium on the Westwood campus. On Wednesday and Thursday, the dozen survivors of that round will play--this time for 55 minutes apiece, again in Schoenberg. The end of the competition, next Sunday from 3 to 6 p.m. in Royce Hall, will give the three finalists the opportunity to be heard in a complete concerto, accompanied by the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra. The winners of that round will take home prizes totaling $18,500, to be given at the awards ceremony after the competition.

The 31 pianists in the preliminaries, representing 10 nations, are: Sevgi Topyan, Robert Nakea, Thomas Otten, Emily White, Joel Wizansky, Angela Cholakyan, Thomas Tirino, Hsing-Chwen Hsin, Peter Mack, Lisa Spector, Daniel Shapiro, Sean Botkin, Thomas Labe, Cary Chow, Jovianney Cruz, Florence Millet, David Lyons, Eui-Kyung Ohm, Gary Hammond, Cecilia Cho, Jean Saulnier, Soojin Ahn, Alan Chow, Brent Runnels, Alvina Chiu, Sung-Kuk Kim, Arthur Greene, Choong-Mo Kang, Edith Chen, Steven Heyman, and Caleb Tsai.

Auditors are welcome at the second day of preliminaries, today from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and at the semi-finals, Wednesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon and from 2 to 5 p.m. There is an admission charge of $5 to the finals next Sunday.

GIFTS AND GRANTS: The late Eugenia Blinder, widow of former San Francisco Symphony concertmaster Naoum Blinder, has left a gift “in excess of $1 million”--the exact figure will not be known until the estate is settled, according to a spokesman for the symphony. Purpose of the gift is to endow the orchestra’s concertmaster’s chair in memory of Naoum Blinder. Blinder served as concertmaster for 25 years, under music directors Issay Dobrowen, Pierre Monteux and Enrique Jorda. He retired in 1957. An active teacher, he counted among his students Isaac Stern. . . . Seventy-eight dance presenters have been awarded a total of $1.1 million in federal grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for the 1989-90 concert season. The largest grants went to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival ($60,000), Dance Theatre Workshop in New York City ($56,000), American Dance Festival in North Carolina ($55,000), UC Berkeley ($32,400), Walker Art Center in Minneapolis ($30,000), Brooklyn Academy of Music ($30,000), Society for the Performing Arts in Houston ($29,500), Kennedy Center ($27,800) and Spoleto Festival USA ($25,500).