CLASSICAL MUSIC : Versatile Pianist Eschews Rachmaninoff Expert Label

Pianist Horacio Gutierrez has been performing and recording a good deal of Rachmaninoff this year, but he refuses to be labeled a Rachmaninoff expert.

“I agree with (pianist Artur) Schnabel’s definition of an expert: Someone who plays everything else a little worse. I think it’s dangerous to consider oneself an expert.”

This weekend for the San Diego Symphony’s inaugural program of the 1990-91 season, Gutierrez will perform Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini,” with music director Yoav Talmi. Gutierrez was drafted as soloist on two weeks’ notice when Andre Watts bowed out because of continuing medical problems. Next week Gutierrez will help the Los Angeles Philharmonic open its season when he performs Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto under the baton of former music director Andre Previn.

While preparing for these performances, the New York-based pianist has been commuting to Pittsburgh, where he is recording Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with Lorin Maazel and the Pittsburgh Symphony. Earlier this year, Gutierrez recorded the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody with David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony.

“I hadn’t done the Russian literature for several years,” Gutierrez explained. “I was playing a lot of Germanic music, especially over the last six years as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival. I do take pride in the breadth of my repertoire. Most Mozart players don’t venture as far as Rachmaninoff and vice versa. I find playing Mozart and chamber music to be wonderfully cleansing.”

Born in Havana in 1948, Gutierrez started playing the piano at age 4 and made his debut with the Havana Symphony when he was 11. Despite this early display of talent, he is thankful his parents did not push him into a public career too early.

“My mother was a pianist, but she did not know anything about the world of the Wunderkind. My parents never exploited me, and they let my talent develop naturally. My teacher in Cuba was careful not to overexpose me. That is why I was not playing on TV and traveling to different countries. Starting too early creates emotional problems, I think, because it means that the musician’s childhood is undernourished, especially in terms of relationships.”

At age 21, Gutierrez won the silver medal at Moscow’s 1970 Tchaikovsky Competition, which launched his professional career in earnest. His post-competition debut was with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Not surprisingly, he played the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto.

“I feel the Romantic school very strongly. Like a Wagnerian singer, you have to have the physical attributes to carry off this music. If, for example, you have small hands and weigh 90 pounds, this music is not for you. You cannot play Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky with a small sound.”

Gutierrez was quick to add, however, that sheer strength and hand size do not a Romantic player make.

“The real challenge of interpreting this music is more intellectual and emotional, of course.”

Although Gutierrez is less than vocal for avant garde piano music, he is worried about the lack of new compositions being added to the instrument’s repertory.

“Earlier in this century, we heard in concert the music of Prokofiev, Ravel, Debussy and Bartok. Soon after it was composed, not just one performer took it up, but dozens would play it. It was not just one or two ‘contemporary music specialists’ who started playing Ravel.”

Gutierrez has been an advocate for William Schuman’s 1943 Piano Concerto, which he has performed with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He complained that he offered to play John Corigliano’s Piano Concerto for two major North American orchestra, but they declined his offer.

Fortunately for Gutierrez, the musical market for Rachmaninoff is about as strong as the demand for oil from the Persian Gulf.

The price is right. One of downtown’s most laudable musical traditions is San Diego Mini-Concerts, the free lunch-hour performances at noon on alternate Mondays. Now in its 18th season, the series has found a new home in Horton Plaza’s Lyceum Theatre.

Pianist Danielle Martin will inaugurate this season Oct. 8 with a program that includes Beethoven’s Sonata, Op. 110, Brahms’ Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 21, and shorter works by Poulenc and Rachmaninoff. Martin is a member of the music faculty of the University of Texas at Austin.

Downtowners may bring a brown bag lunch to these concerts. If your lunch hour is shorter than the hourlong program, this is one time when it is not considered a breach of etiquette to leave before the concert’s end.

Off the beaten track. Programs this week that are likely to skirt the Rachmaninoff rut include an appearance of The Bobs at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5. The cheeky male vocal ensemble, which has been described as a cross between Devo and the Mills Brothers, will be joined on stage by the modern dance troupe ISO. At the Casa del Prado in Balboa Park Oct. 5-7, the San Diego Comic Opera Company will present the Exposition Band Concert to celebrate the park’s 75th anniversary. The program of popular band works from 1915, the year the Panama-California Exposition opened the park, will include several overtures from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Bass Kevin Bell, a recent winner of regional Metropolitan Opera Auditions, will give a recital of arias, spirituals and art songs at the Solana Beach Presbyterian Church at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7.