CLASSICAL MUSIC : Temirkanov Replaces Muti for Philadelphia Orchestra Concert

The good news is that after a 15-year absence from the city, the Philadelphia Orchestra returns to Copley Symphony Hall on Friday at 8 p.m. The orchestra’s program, Dvorak’s familiar Symphony No. 8 and Prokofiev’s less frequently played Symphony No. 5, marks both the end of Philadelphia’s 13-city transcontinental tour and the final offering of the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s 1989-90 orchestra series.

The bad news is that music director Riccardo Muti left the Philadelphia tour after the orchestra’s first San Francisco concert Sunday night. As planned, guest conductor Yuri Temirkanov replaces Muti for the remainder of the tour, which includes a pair of concerts in Los Angeles and the nowadays obligatory visit to Costa Mesa’s Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Temirkanov, who is principal conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic as well as artistic director of Leningrad’s Kirov Opera, has cultivated his American connections since he first conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1973. He was guest conductor for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1979 tour, but the cultural freeze of the Brezhnev era put his American activities on hold. When the Soviet-American cultural exchange agreement was signed in 1986, Temirkanov was the first Soviet conductor to return to North American symphony podiums. He has frequently conducted at the Hollywood Bowl and next season will bring his Leningrad Philharmonic to Los Angeles for four concerts at the Los Angeles Music Center.

The Philadelphia Orchestra, meanwhile, is noted for its support of new music. Over the years, it has played more than 120 world premieres, and in 1987 the American Society of Composers and Publishers presented the Philadelphia Orchestra its highest award for creative programming.

Pulitzer-prize winning composer Bernard Rands, who was appointed Philadelphia’s composer-in-residence this season, was the San Diego Symphony’s composer-in-residence from 1983-86. While Rands was associated with the local symphony--he was also a member of the UC San Diego music faculty--he premiered several works, including his two orchestral suites “Le Tambourin” in December, 1984. On seven concerts of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s current tour, Rands’ Second “Le Tambourin” Suite was on the agenda. The suite was one of the 10 works of the touring repertory.

Perhaps the San Diego Symphony’s new music director Yoav Talmi should visit the orchestra’s library and resurrect the Rands score, a fine piece that deserves a local airing, for another performance.

Polish connection. David Amos, music director of the Jewish Community Center Orchestra, continues to expand the offerings of 20th-Century American composers on compact disc. Earlier this spring, he flew to Poland to make a pair of them with the Krakow Symphony for Koch records, an Austrian recording firm. The first CD is devoted to works by Paul Creston: his popular Second Symphony and two shorter tone poems. A well-known American composer in the mid-century, Creston spent his retirement in Rancho Bernardo. The other CD will feature orchestra selections by Norman Dello Joio and Morton Gould’s “Holocaust” Suite, a score Gould wrote for a television miniseries.

“I had some trepidation communicating with the Polish players,” Amos explained, “but when I arrived, I discovered that the concertmaster, Mstislav Slezer, had studied at Indiana University.” Not only did Slezer turn out to be a fluent translator for the American guest conductor, but he and Amos, who studied conducting at Indiana University in the late 1960s, knew many of the same colleagues from their student days.

Next month Amos will conduct the Polish Radio Orchestra for a recording of three violin concertos, including the recently discovered single-movement Faure Violin Concerto. After his Polish project, Amos will return to London to make two more CDs with the London Symphony Orchestra. One of the recordings will focus on four Ernest Bloch works currently unavailable on recording. He will also record for Harmonia Mundi Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Tripla Concerti a Tre” and Miklos Rozsa’s “Tripartita.”

Just the facts. If raising money in the local business community continues to be the San Diego Symphony’s most vexing problem, getting more people to attend concerts has been the local orchestra’s strong suit. Over the recently completed 1989-90 season, 102,220 paying patrons attended symphony concerts, an 11% increase over the previous season, according to statistics supplied by symphony officials. Ticket income for the season--72 performances in all--was just over $1.4 million, a 15% increase over 1988-89.

This week. Civic organist Robert Plimpton will perform a solo organ recital at Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral on Friday. The organ at the noted television temple is one of the largest instruments in the state. . . . Maestro David Atherton opens his 10-day Mainly Mozart Festival on Thursday night at the Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. The opening night concert features concertmaster William Preucil in Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto . . . Friends of El Cajon’s East County Performing Arts Center will hold a backstage fund-raiser June 4 at 5:30 p.m. to inaugurate a new ECPAC auxiliary. East County culture vultures can contact Marjie Ramos (465-1700, ext. 549) for more information about the project.