Low-Key Pianist Packs Bach, Beethoven for Trip to S.D.

Right after Vladimir Horowitz’s death in November, Bryan Verhoye’s teacher at the Peabody Conservatory, William Doppmann, greeted him with the tongue-in-cheek challenge, “Well, there’s a vacancy at the top.”

Though Verhoye appreciated the spirit of that remark, his musical goals have always been on a more gradual timetable. After the San Diego native won several competitions and honors on the West Coast--including top prize in 1986 at the local Joseph Fisch Piano Competition and first place in 1989 at the Carmel Music Society Piano Competition--last fall he matriculated in Peabody’s graduate performance program. He is back in town to play a recital Jan. 14 (5 p.m.) at San Diego’s First Presbyterian Church.

The death of Horowitz, however, has not solved a problem for Verhoye. Always looking for unusual repertory, Verhoye laboriously transcribed from a record Horowitz’s improvised fantasy on themes from Bizet’s “Carmen.” He learned this flashy showpiece

and wants to program it, but has hesitated to give this purloined gem its proper authorship.

“I had heard that he became quite irate with pianists who used his improvisations,” Verhoye said, “and I still don’t know what sort of rights his estate has to the piece.” So Horowitz’s “Carmen Fantasy” has to serve as a favored encore for recitals played far from New York City.

Before Verhoye left San Diego for Baltimore, he divided his time between playing recitals and competitions and providing toney background music for the Westgate Hotel’s afternoon tea and the Fairbanks Ranch Country Club lounge. Now, he is on a strict regimen of learning

mounds of new repertory and collecting pearls of wisdom from Leon Fleisher’s master classes. But he did confess to a few deviations from this musical asceticism.

“I’ve gone down to Washington a couple of times to play for (Senator) Pete Wilson’s parties,” he said. For the record, the Wilson household prefers Broadway show tunes.

“Pete Wilson’s favorite tune in the whole world is ‘If I Loved You’ from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical ‘Carousel,’ ” he noted. As an avocation, the senator’s wife, Gayle, turns musical comedy lyrics into topical political parodies to entertain her guests.

Verhoye’s Sunday recital will include a late Beethoven Sonata, Op. 101, Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka” Suite, and the Busoni arrangement of J. S. Bach’s “Chaconne” (“It’s one of those spacious works that will resonate in a big church setting.”) He will also play Chopin’s B-flat Minor Scherzo, just because Van Cliburn winner Alexei Sultanov played it on his San Diego program during the Soviet Arts Festival. Verhoye will repeat the program in April for the Carmel Music Society in the invitational recital that came with his competition win.

In spite of the glut of aspiring young pianists on the apparently shrinking classical music market, this 28-year-old pianist is unperturbed by the challenge. Compared to his overachieving East Coast colleagues at Peabody, he notes his philosophy has the unmistakable hallmark of his unwavering Southern California outlook.

“In a recent interview, Van Cliburn said that the true performer has to love playing so much that he cannot dream of living without it. That may have some truth, but you have to be able to know when that attitude has become an unhealthy obsession. You have to know when to stop trying to climb the mountain.”

Just don’t count on Verhoye throwing in the towel prematurely.

Reynolds on record. Last year, when UC San Diego composer Roger Reynolds won the Pulitzer Prize for “Whispers Out of Time,” few people had heard the work. Its sole recording was a tape made by student musicians at Amherst College, where Reynolds had written and premiered the composition as a visiting professor.

Next month, UCSD’s Center for Music Experiment will remedy this situation by recording “Whispers Out of Time” and an earlier Reynolds opus, “Transfigured Wind II,” for New World Records. New York flutist Harvey Sollberger will conduct members of the San Diego Symphony in both works. Sollberger conducted the premiere of “Whispers Out of Time” and was the flute soloist for the 1984 premiere of “Transfigured Wind II” with the New York Philharmonic, for which it was commissioned. For the recording, UCSD flutist Jon Fonville will be the soloist. Sollberger had also provided some of the recorded flute materials that Reynolds manipulated on the UCSD computers--hence the title “Transfigured Wind.”

The New World recording will be released in both compact disc and conventional LP--New World is one of the few companies that still issues vinyl recordings.

Keeping the budget balanced. The San Diego Symphony’s first program in its new Pulitzer Prize series debuts Thursday night at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium. It will feature works by New York composer Charles Wuorinen, who will also conduct the evening’s fare. Although this commendable, adventurous series will offer recent works by UCSD composer Roger Reynolds next month, the series’ third program--which would have presented Stephen Albert’s compositions on April 5--has been scrapped by orchestra management. According to executive director Wesley Brustad, the series’ unanticipated demands on symphony personnel and the resultant costs forced him to curtail the series.