A Homecoming, of Sorts, for Guest Violinist Schiff

When violinist Zina Schiff returns as guest soloist with the San Diego Symphony on Thursday evening at Copley Symphony Hall, it will be a homecoming of sorts. Although she is a Los Angeles native, Schiff has longstanding ties with the local orchestra. In 1969, at the age of 17, Schiff made her San Diego Symphony debut under the baton of the late Zoltan Rozsnyai.

“Zoltan was the first conductor I auditioned for on my own,” Schiff explained, although the prodigy had made her orchestral debut at age 12 in a Los Angeles Philharmonic Young People’s concert.

“Zoltan hired me to play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, and I remember he took special pains to work with me on the piece. We played it on the orchestra’s summer concert series, which was then performed out at San Diego State University. I remember that outdoor performance because I was bit by a mosquito when I was playing, and I spent the next week with my leg up recovering from the bite.”

Schiff decided not to hold such an accident against the orchestra. She quickly returned to play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto under then concertmaster Robert Emile and in 1984 performed the Bloch Violin Concerto under maestro David Atherton. This week she will play Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto with the orchestra’s new music director, Yoav Talmi.

While Schiff is slowly working her way through the concerto repertory with the local orchestra, one of her biggest fans is her older sister, San Diego Symphony section violinist Eileen Wingard. Schiff began her violin studies at the age of 3 with Eileen and soon progressed through a respectable line of violin teachers, including Ivan Galamian at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute and the legendary Jascha Heifetz.

“The Barber Violin Concerto is important to me because it is the first major work I learned on my own after I left Heifetz,” Schiff said. “I had wanted to study it with him. But he always had firm ideas of what he wanted you to work on, and we never got to the Barber. I remember how trying it was to learn it one summer when I was staying with family in Los Angeles. The only place I could practice in the apartment was in the bathroom with the mute on my violin.”

Schiff acknowledged that she missed her chance to discuss the fine points of the Barber Concerto with the composer. A Curtis graduate, Barber had been a faculty member at the conservatory from 1939-42, and after he retired he sometimes dropped in on gatherings of Curtis students.

“I was only 14 then, and when Barber would make an appearance at an afternoon tea for students, I was too shy to speak to him. He was a very imposing man.”

Schiff recently recorded the Barber Concerto, which she calls “the Rachmaninoff of American 20th-Century music because it comes from the heart.” The disc was made with Andrew Schenck and the New Zealand Symphony, but has not yet been released.

For the past 10 years Schiff has lived with her husband and two daughters in Shreveport, La. In addition to her orchestra performances, she has given solo recitals at Boston’s Gardiner Museum and has appeared at the Newport, R.I., chamber music festival.

On the run for the Symphony. The annual Quarternote Classic, a music and sports fund-raiser for the San Diego Symphony, will be held Oct. 28 in Balboa Park. Participants can choose either a 10K run or a 2-mile stride, but in either case they will be serenaded along the way by performing ensembles drawn from the orchestra. Registration is at 6:30 a.m., and the run and walk begin at 7:30 a.m. The winners will be presented at 10 a.m. at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, following a free orchestra concert.

In the Quarternote Classic, prizes go not only to the fleet, but also to the creative. Participants are encouraged to come in costume, and prizes will be awarded for the best costume, according to symphony officials. There are no specific guidelines issued for competition attire, but perhaps a Wes Brustad look-alike category would be appropriate.

On the road for the opera. The San Diego Opera Ensemble, a troupe of six young professional singers and an accompanist, hits the school and community group circuit this week. For the next two months, the ensemble will perform Bizet’s comic opera “Doctor Miracle” and two potpourri programs of opera and musical theater selections. This is the fourth season for the local company’s well-received opera outreach program. This year’s singers include sopranos Patricia Minton Smith and Debra McLaren, mezzo-soprano Anita Colet, tenor Beau Palmer and baritones Jeffrey Calof and John Polhamus.

Notable this week. Pianist Jeffrey Swan continues the East County Performing Arts Center’s “World of Music Series” tonight at 8:30. Organist Daniel Burton will perform his 1980 opus, “Seven Dances of Creation,” at San Diego’s First United Methodist Church at 7 p.m. Sunday. KPBS-FM will celebrate 30 years of broadcasting by planting 30 trees in Balboa Park on Monday at 5:30 p.m. Now that the radio station has whittled its classical music broadcasting down to a scant three hours per day, perhaps they can toss into the holes they dig for the saplings all those classical CDs they won’t be needing in the future.