USC Schoenberg Institute Strikes Chord for Pianist : Music: Austrian Walter Klien, who plays in Orange County Saturday, calls the USC archives “fantastic!”

A regular visitor to Southern California since 1975, Walter Klien never before found time to explore the riches housed at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC--until this week, that is, when the Austrian pianist arrived for three concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, including one Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Monday afternoon, Klien had just returned from the Schoenberg Institute and exuberantly described his tour of the archives.

“Fantastic!” he exclaimed, several times. “This was worth the whole journey (his current, one-month tour to the United States and Japan), just to see the institute.”

He spoke with awe of being given the opportunity, by his hosts at USC, to inspect the manuscript of Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, a work Klien has performed more than 70 times since “the first time I played it, with (Wolfgang) Sawallisch, in 1955.”

And he was still excited at seeing the composer’s actual workroom--reconstructed on the second floor of the institute--as it was, four decades ago.

Now 60, Klien has for more than 40 years quietly pursued a steady career path at the piano. No keyboard superstar, he has nevertheless earned admiration for his eclectic, wide-ranging repertory, and his particular affinity for music of Viennese composers.

His recordings also include pairings with instrumentalists and singers, and he’s even made records of piano duets with Alfred Brendel and his wife, Beatrice.

In the process of specializing in several corners of the literature, he has amassed a recorded legacy of huge proportions: He has recorded the entire solo piano catalogues of Mozart and Brahms and all the sonatas of Schubert, as well as huge chunks of repertory by other German-speaking masters.

Does he miss playing all the rest of the piano repertory--Chopin, for instance, and Debussy and Ravel? The last two are composers in whom he specialized when he studied with the legendary Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, in Italy, after World War II.

“Oh, yes. I miss Chopin especially. I would like to go back to the Preludes, to the sonatas. But, the demands of time. . . .”

Still, if Klien has not been in demand for his Romantic repertory, he has been judicious in his choices of works of our own century. Besides Schoenberg, he has played works by Hindemith--with whom he studied composition in Salzburg in the late 1940s--by Berg, by Stravinsky. He mentioned future projects: the new piano concerto by Luciano Berio, which Klien may play next season.

Is there one composer he does not play?

Without hesitation, Klien laughed, and said: “Khachaturian!”

Then he regretted what he had said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to mention one composer. But I really don’t like his piano concerto.”

Mozart is the heart of Klien’s repertory, and he said he looks forward to 1991, the bicentennial of the composer’s death, and all the Mozart performances the year will bring.

With the Philharmonic this week he plays the F-major Concerto, K. 459. In Washington next week he plays the D-minor Concerto, a work he also takes to Cincinnati, before going to St. Louis to play Beethoven’s C-minor Concerto.

“Then, I’m off to Japan, to play K. 595 (the B-flat Piano Concerto, probably Mozart’s last) twice with the NHK Symphony, conducted by Hiroshi Wakasugi, who is the director of the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich. Then I go home to Vienna.”

Does he have second thoughts about all the music he has recorded--would he like to re-record his Schubert sonatas, for instance?

“Not until a week has passed. Then I think I would like to do such-and-such differently.

“I don’t enjoy listening to recordings I have made because today I would not play everything just as I did then.

“Human beings change, everything changes, we’re always becoming something different. Life is so . . . temporary.”

The Orange County Philharmonic Society will present the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Kurt Sanderling, with soloist Walter Klien , Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. The program: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 19, K. 459, and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3. Tickets: $12 to $35. Information: (714) 556-2787.