Violinist Lippi to Play Mozart in County Debut : The 21-year-old musician, who started playing when she was 6, had a career breakthrough after moving from the Juilliard School to USC, under Robert Lipsett. The nuances of her playing have received critical acclaim.

In what is turning out to be a golden age of young violinists, critics and audiences are expressing enthusiasm over Isabella Lippi, 21, who will make her county debut with the Pacific Symphony in a Mozart program led by Kate Tamarkin on Saturday at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

Born in Chicago, Lippi started studying violin when she was 6. “I guess my parents noticed that I loved listening to music on the radio,” she said on the phone last week from the Encore Music Camp in Hudson, Ohio, where she was finishing six weeks of classes and workshops.

“Neither of them is a musician, but they just decided to start me on the violin, which was not as expensive as buying a big piano.”

Lippi admitted that her mother “had to push me to practice. But everyone’s mother has to do that. I enjoy playing the violin, not practicing it.”

Lippi turned serious at the tender age of 9, when a teacher told her parents that she should consider music as a career. There was no looking back after that.

“Ever since then, the violin has always been the top priority, over school and everything else,” she said. “My mother said it would be OK if I got Ds and Cs in school, as long as I passed. She only cared about my practice.”

That support had its downside. “Since my mother wanted it so badly, it was hard for me to get motivation from inside, even though I love music, “ Lippi said. “Her pushing me made it seem a chore.”

Lippi moved to New York after graduating from high school so that she could attend the Juilliard School of Music. But that lasted just a year.

“I just didn’t get enough attention there,” she said. “I don’t think I was really ready for a place like Juilliard. You have to have a technique that’s already solid and have to be ready just to polish your playing. I still had problems in my playing that I wanted to fix.”

So she transferred to USC to study with Robert Lipsett, whom she had met at the Encore Music Camp. “I was going to take a year off (from Juilliard) originally,” she said. “But since I was on such a good track--the right track--I decided to stay” with Lipsett.

He gave her two lessons a week and made her study all aspects of technique. “He’s very dedicated,” Lippi said. “Every single one of his students is very good because he cares so much. That’s basically it. He really gives.

“At the very, very beginning my vibrato wasn’t really even all the time. So I did vibrato exercises with a metronome every day to even it out, but also to get a variety of different tones. I used to play with a very intense sound all the time. I never really let up. Now I think I have more of a variety.”

Indeed, critics in St. Louis commented on the “countless nuances” in her production of tone and shaping of phrases. “When they said that, it was a big complement,” Lippi said. “It’s usually a problem for everyone, because we want to play the music and don’t think of technique enough.”

These days, “every morning, I do at least an hour of technique,” she said. “I do scales every day and listen hard. I definitely get inspired by listening to tapes or even live performances. If I don’t listen to other people for a while, it’s not as easy for me to get motivated. When I hear other people playing, it makes me realize what I want to do--just keep striving for more.”

She will be playing a concerto by Mozart with the Pacific Symphony, but Bach is her favorite composer. “I love Mozart, but there is something about Bach,” she said. “It just has this soul and is so simple.”

For all her love of Bach, though, Lippi does not advocate using original or Baroque instruments to play his music. “I don’t really like the way those instruments sound,” she said. “I don’t believe in trying to recapture the old sound. You should try to play so that it’s enjoyable. That’s the most important thing, to make it sound the best.”

Mozart provides his own problems for the player, Lippi added. “It has to be so perfect. It’s 10 times harder because it’s so exposed. It’s really a headache to try to get it so perfect.”

A first-place winner in the 1988 Young Musicians’ Foundation National Debut Competition in Los Angeles, Lippi got her big break a year later when she won a competition to play with the St. Louis Symphony in a pops program. Leonard Slatkin, the orchestra’s music director was one of the judges; after hearing her, he decided to upgrade the award.

“They awarded me three subscription concerts instead of the pops programs,” Lippi said. “That was incredible. It was such a lucky break. I was really happy about that.”

Isabella Lippi will be soloist in a Mozart program by the Pacific Symphony, conducted by Kate Tamarkin Saturday at 8:30 p.m. at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $8.50 to $37.50. Lawn seating: $7.50. Information: (714) 474-4233.

Anyone interested in applying for a National Endowment for the Arts “Dance Heritage” grant to document important U.S. artists, companies, works, styles or techniques should write to the NEA by Oct. 1. Those who send letters will be notified by Jan. 4 whether they should submit formal applications. Letters should outline the nature, cost and methodology of the proposed project; should list potential collaborators, and should be addressed to the Dance Program, Dance Heritage Initiative, Room 620, National Endowment for the Arts, Nancy Hanks Center, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington 20506. For details, call Douglas C. Sonntag at (202) 682-5435.