Rare Haydn Work to Get a Modern Premiere : Music: A harpsichord ensemble’s performance of the half-forgotten work will open concert series.

The Ventura Arts Council starts its 1990 concert series in City Hall this week with a “clever, simple work” for harpsichords by Franz Joseph Haydn that reportedly lay half forgotten for 200 years.

Beginning at 8 p.m., the 12-member harpsichord ensemble, Le Nuove Musiche, will perform Haydn’s Divertimento for Harpsichords and Strings, in what ensemble leader Eric Kinsley said will be a modern-day premiere. Also included on the program is J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, J.C. Bach’s Sonata in C and other pieces for baroque ensemble.

Kinsley says he obtained a copy of the Haydn score by chance. The harpsichordist, who will receive his doctoral degree in music performance in June from the Manhattan School of Music, found it while doing research. A book on the composer’s works said an Italian count had an extensive private collection, including the divertimento.

Several weeks after writing to the count and expressing an interest in performing the piece with his group, Kinsley said, he received a copy of the score in the mail. Written in 1780, it is “a clever, simple work,” he said.

“Unlike Mozart, only a fraction of Haydn’s works are commonly performed, and there is still quite a lot that goes unplayed,” said Kinsley, of Ventura. “I was really happy to find this.”

Why the lack of attention given to many of the composer’s works? Kinsley’s theory is that, again unlike Mozart, Haydn was successful during his lifetime and had several people whose job it was to copy his work. As a result, he said, Haydn’s works were copied by as many as 17 different people.

“What happens then is that sometimes a musicologist won’t be completely certain that a particular work was really written by Haydn, and that doubt can affect whether something gets played,” he said.

As for the harpsichord piece, which he believes has all the elements common to the composer, there is “very little doubt” in Kinsey’s mind that it is authentic.

Friday’s concert won’t be the only opportunity to hear rarely performed music in the intimate, comfortable setting of City Hall. Upcoming concerts include a performance on April 20 of seldom-heard but important music of the classical and romantic periods; and, on May 18, an evening that features emerging 20th-Century composers.

“A lot of people are intimidated by going to a concert hall, by getting all dressed up and also by the ticket price,” said Liz Stuart, administrative programs manager for the Ventura Arts Council, a co-sponsor of the concert series with Chevron U.S.A. and the city of Ventura Department of Parks and Recreation. “At City Hall, though, it’s elegant and intimate, and people can dress casually.”

Along with other musicians involved in the series, Kinsley and his ensemble hope to do a lot more than find seldom-performed music. They also want to play often-performed classical music for people who rarely hear it.

An adjunct to the City Hall concert series, now in its ninth year, is an outreach program where musicians put on free, educational performances--a kind of “mountain to Mohammed” approach--designed to make classical music readily available to novices.

“The musicians have played everywhere from the county mental health facility in Ventura and a school for orthopedically handicapped children, to brown-bag performances for people who work,” Stuart said.

Kinsley, who also will play in a free trio performance from noon to 12:45 p.m. Friday at Patagonia in Ventura, said he likes to give people at outreach concerts a bit of information about what they will hear.

“I like to tell them what makes the music identifiable and the signature thing that each composer does,” he said. “Haydn, for example, is very good at throwing surprises that are called false recapitulations. Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach has multi-emotional changes, and you almost never get what you expect.”

Tickets for the Le Nuove Musiche concert are available at the door the night of the performance, or from the Ventura Arts Council, 34 N. Palm St., Ventura. Cost for Arts Council members is $5; $6 for non-members. For more information, call 653-0828.