Riviera Conductor Offers French Program

This is the time of year when many Americans think of heading to Europe and, for those who have access to unlimited funds, vacationing on the fabled French Riviera.

But where do you go on holiday when the Riviera is where you work? If you’re Philippe Bender, music director of the Orchestre Regional de Cannes-Provence, you head to . . . Garden Grove. Well, it’s not exactly a vacation for Bender, who leads the Garden Grove Symphony in a program of music by French composers tonight at Don Wash Auditorium.

But then, Bender’s normal employment schedule, which includes regular touring through southern France, wouldn’t sound much like work to a lot of people.

“I have to play in Marseilles, Aix-en-Provence, Cannes, Antibes . . . ,” Bender said in a recent interview.

As in: It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it?

“It’s OK,” Bender said. “But it’s difficult during the summer. Everyone is on vacation, and you have to work.”

His orchestra--its full name is Orchestre Regional de Cannes-Provence Alpes Cote d’Azur--is one of 10 regional orchestras in France. They are all supported by the national government, the chief cities and the regions of the country.

“In Cannes, we rehearse twice each week and play a program three times on the weekend,” he said. “Sometimes we also play a fourth program on the following Tuesday.”

The orchestra works 11 months a year. Last year, it gave 104 concerts, up from the usual 70 to 80 because of tours to the United States and to Japan. Bender said he conducts 30 to 35 of those concerts himself, the rest delegated to guest conductors.

Although subsidized by the government, the orchestra also depends on ticket income, according to the conductor. “If we have large audiences, we can invite well-known soloists because we have the money to pay them,” he said. “We can also buy a lot of things, better publicity, advertising.”

Bender is familiar with cultural life in this country too, having served as an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, a position he held for two years in the early 1970s, overlapping the regimes of Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez.

Since then, he also has led the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Orchestre del la Suisse Romande and the Tokyo Philharmonic, among others.

“Now the level of the musicians everywhere in the world is so good, you can obtain that (fabled French sound) from every orchestra.”

Even the Garden Grove Symphony, for whom Bender is completing a conductor exchange? (Garden Grove music director Edward Peterson visited Cannes in February to lead Bender’s orchestra.)

After the first of five rehearsals to prepare for tonight’s concert, Bender said diplomatically, “It went well. . . . For the sound, we’ll see.”

Philippe Bender, music director of the Orchestre Regional de Cannes-Provence, will lead the Garden Grove Symphony in a program by French composers at tonight at 8 p.m. at Don Wash Auditorium, 11271 Stanford Ave., in Garden Grove. Deborah Kiszely will be soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. Tickets: $7 to $25. Information: (714) 534-1103.