Symphony Plans Changes in Style, Not Substance

In his opening season as the San Diego Symphony’s music director, Yoav Talmi promises several innovations in format, but a minimum of innovative music.

Talmi, who will conduct 10 of the 17 subscription programs on the orchestra’s 1990-91 winter season, disclosed programming details Wednesday.

The season will include a new series of three chamber orchestra concerts in Symphony Hall, called Classically Baroque; two programs that will lead to the symphony’s first recordings of classical repertory and a collaboration with the Old Globe Theatre in a concert that will juxtapose excerpts from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” with symphonic music by Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev inspired by the play.

Talmi, who considers himself a Bruckner and Mahler specialist, will conduct Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony (Nov. 30-Dec.2) as well as Mahler’s Second Symphony “Resurrection” with the San Diego Master Chorale (April 5-7, 1991).

For the American Pro Arte label, the orchestra will record a pair of CD’s. The first will be a potpourri of J.S. Bach orchestral transcriptions (from the concerts on Feb. 14 and 16, 1991), and the second will contain works from the “Romeo and Juliet” collage (May 9 and 10, 1991).

Principal guest conductor Robert Shaw will lead three subscription programs, including the Mozart “Great” Mass in C Minor with the Master Chorale (Jan. 10-13), the first offering of the orchestra’s yearlong tribute celebrating the bicentennial of Mozart’s death. Talmi said nearly every subscription concert in 1991 will contain at least one Mozart work and will be preceded by a half-hour program of Mozart’s chamber music.

Shaw will carry the brunt of American music programming, with two programs in March, 1991. The first will give the local premiere of John Harbison’s “Remembering Gatsby,” a commission from the Atlanta Symphony first performed in 1986, and the second will be devoted to the music of Leonard Bernstein, including his “Chichester Psalms.”

The orchestra’s 24-week schedule, expanded one week from the current season, will include four classic silent films accompanied by organist Dennis James and the orchestra, the popular Nickelodeon Series. Regular guest conductor Murry Sidlin will return four times to narrate and conduct the Classical Hits Series.

The entertainment-oriented SuperPops Series has been renamed WinterPops; it will feature the return of Peter Schickele as P.D.Q. Bach (Feb. 1-2) and two other programs.

On Oct. 5, Talmi will inaugurate the season with a program that pairs Brahms’ First Symphony with Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini,” with piano soloist Andre Watts.

Though Talmi has previously expressed his commitment to contemporary music, the Israeli conductor has selected nothing more avant-garde than Samuel Barber’s 1941 Violin Concerto, which will feature violinist Zina Schiff (Oct. 11-12). He promised to compensate for this oversight in the 1991-92 season. Talmi’s first encounter with the Master Chorale will be in the Faure Requiem (Oct. 19-21).

Guest conductors include the return of German conductor Klauspeter Seibel (Oct. 25-27) and the local debut of Polish maestro Kazimierz Kord. The Warsaw Philharmonic music director will lead Szymanowski’s Nocturne from “Nocturne and Tarantella” and Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony. Assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Heiichiro Ohyama, who appeared with the symphony at last year’s Symphony Tower opening gala concert, will conduct the third chamber orchestra program (Jan. 3).

Among the soloists who will appear with the orchestra next season are pianist Jeffrey Kahane; cellist Lynn Harrell, who has been the orchestra’s music adviser for the past two seasons; pianist Jose Carlos Cocarelli, silver medalist in the 1989 Van Cliburn Competition; prodigy Lelia Josefowicz, who performed last year with the SummerPops, and symphony principal clarinet David Peck.