CLASSICAL MUSIC / KENNETH HERMAN : Soviet Mother-Son Team Will Perform in La Jolla

For violinist Dmitri Sitkovetsky, being invited back to the Soviet Union to perform last year was his personal equivalent of the opening of the Berlin Wall.

“Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I could go back,” observed Sitkovetsky, who defected from the Soviet Union in 1977 at age 23. “The concerts brought forth an incredible rush of emotions. Tickets had sold out within the first few hours.”

In 12 days, Sitkovetsky played six performances in Moscow.

“For me, it was coming full circle in my personal odyssey. The spell of my father’s name dominated my childhood. To come back (to the Soviet Union) as a violinist on my own marked the beginning of coming into my own identity.”

When Sitkovetsky first arrived in New York City, the young performer had only $120 to his name. He enrolled in Juilliard’s graduate program and slowly made a name for himself in America. In Dec., 1988, Sitkovetsky and his mother, pianist Bella Davidovich, were the first Soviet emigre musicians invited by the Soviet government to return and perform. Sitkovetsky and Davidovich were welcomed back to their native country when they performed with the Moscow Philharmonic Dec. 19, 1988. This concert, in which he played concertos by Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and Davidovich played Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” was dedicated to Sitkovetsky’s violinist father, the late Julian Sitkovetsky.

Sitkovetsky’s father died of cancer in 1958, when Dmitri was only 3 1/2. Although his father’s influence was indirect, the musical influence of his mother--Davidovich had won the Chopin Competition in 1949 and was a leading Soviet concert pianist--was more tangible.

Dmitri Sitkovetsky began playing concerts with Davidovich while in his late teens. His mother emigrated two years after he did, and they resumed their public performances together only recently. Davidovich and Sitkovetsky will perform in recital for the La Jolla Chamber Music Society at 8 p.m. Thursday in Sherwood Auditorium.

Sitkovetsky has settled in London, although he tours North America regularly. Each summer he heads a chamber music festival in Korsholm, Finland, where he has successfully brought together both Soviet and former Soviet musicians.

“With the current political changes, Soviet musicians are eager to catch up on what they have been missing during these years of isolation. But, for the musicians, there are still limitations in the Soviet Union,” he said. “Before, the limitations were the official prohibitions on Western music. Now that the prohibitions are gone, the problem is the lack of materials, the lack of Western musical scores and recordings.”

Sitkovetsky has been invited back to perform another concert with the Moscow Philharmonic. On New Year’s Eve, he will play concertos by Beethoven and Bartok; this time with his American colleague, Gerard Schwarz, on the podium.

Return of Strauss. Ian Campbell, general director of San Diego Opera, has broken precedent and announced the 1992 season’s opening opera. A production of Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier” will feature soprano Ashley Putnam as the Marschallin and Artur Korn as the comical Baron Ochs. Vienna State Opera’s Wolfgang Weber will direct the production. Campbell made the early announcement because the Maxwell H. Gluck Foundation, at the direction of Southern California arts patron Muriel Gluck, has awarded the company a $250,000 grant to underwrite the opera. Campbell also noted that this grant helps San Diego Opera match its $400,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which it received earlier this year.

One more union. San Diego Opera’s yearlong labor troubles with its hair stylists and makeup artists has finally been resolved.

In an election held under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Board on Oct. 24, a majority of these 21 backstage opera workers in the company’s “Boris Godunov” production voted to be represented by Local 706 of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees. The opera is now required to bargain with Local 706, a union based in North Hollywood, said NLRB agent Steve Sorenson. The case originated when former San Diego Opera wig maker Paul Best and the NLRB lodged a complaint against the company in January, 1989, when Best and some of his colleagues requested representation by Local 706. But the opera’s general director, Ian Campbell, said the company did not recognize the legality of this request because a proper union election had not been held. Now that the election has been held, Campbell said the company will not contest the vote results and will begin negotiations with Local 706.

In a related case, NLRB administrative judge William Pannier III ruled Aug. 2 that the opera was not obliged to rehire Best, who was not offered a new contract in December, 1988, after working with the opera for 13 years. Though the NLRB act protects the jobs of workers who are seeking union representation, supervisors are not covered. Pannier found that Best’s previous work with the opera fell into that category.

Footnotes. San Diego Symphony music director designate Yoav Talmi received favorable notices while conducting the Oslo Philharmonic at the end of October. The Norwegians were particularly pleased with his sympathetic conducting of Edvard Grieg’s “Two Norwegian Melodies.” . . . A previously unknown Beethoven guitar sonata will be given its premiere by Alberto Ubach Thursday night at the Centro Cultural in Tijuana. . . . Leslie P. Spelman, dean of local organ pedagogues, has commissioned Ned Rorem to write five organ works (under the title of “Organbook I”), which were first played by New York Philharmonic organist Leonard Raver on Oct. 30 in New York City. . . . Local organist and Spelman pupil Jean Price will give the West Coast premiere of the new Rorem pieces next spring.